"If stones could speak,
Then London's praise
Should sound for those w
ho built this church
and city from the ground"

The above quote is taken from the foundation stone in the entrance porch at St. Columb's Cathedral in Derry. They were written in 1633 on the completion of the cathedral. If Stones Could Speak is the title of a project currently being run by Greater Shantallow Community Arts and is funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. The project is designed to provide a creative platform for digital art writers and artists in the Derry area. The aim is to create new work in the form of an anthology of short comic book stories that will use the city of Derry (especially the walled city) as a backdrop. The idea is to "work local and think global". The final artwork will be published and will act as a legacy and enhance the CVs of all those involved.

Greater Shantallow Community Arts
Founded in 1999, GSCA is a community arts organisation based in the Outer North area of Derry in Northern ireland that aims to provide direct access to the arts within communities. It aims to enrich lives, promote artists, the arts and to promote cultural activity. www.gscaderry.com




Friday 26 February 2010

Hello

I'm just going to post to say hello, and to thank Gio for setting this up and getting me involved (though Danny's also to blame for that). As Gio knows I finally got the Headline for the first newspaper article - "Murder amidst the ceasefire". I spent ages trying to come up with stuff that was shorter or snappier, but it fits with locale and history of Derry, and it should prove attention grabbing enough. For anyone reading this who doesn't know what I'm doing for the project, I'm putting together a series of newspaper articles that follow a Jack the Ripper-esque killer at work in a future version of Derry, which has become a booming European economic hub, though the walled part of the city has been left to degenerate into slums, much like the whitechapel area of London that the original Jack carried out his gruesome work. At some point I'm going to get round to writing a timeline from nowish to the point at which the story occurs, as I've been putting a fair amount of thought into the backstory of the city, and it deserves to get mentioned somewhere, perhaps a few faux biographies of notable figures in the fictional history, but that'll have to wait until I've perfected the first page - which will hopefully be done by the end of the week.

1 comment:

  1. cheers for joining us lad. like the headline, works well.

    ReplyDelete