Ennis Chamber working with the community and supporting creatives
It has given Ennis Chamber great pleasure this week to see the joy the new #drainart murals are bringing to residents of our beautiful town.
The idea for the drain art was hatched at an Ennis Chamber Retail Committee meeting, when the wonderfully creative Tina Grogan of Bambino’s showed us some images from Japan and other far flung places of delicate and sometimes bawdy art on manholes. The idea of using a manhoe as a canvas for art really amused us. Further research revealed that a small town in the USA did a project where they painted manholes, but also storm drains.
The seed was planted! The next step was to raise funding and to find artists who could deliver our brief. I wish to acknowledge Creative Ireland in granting us the funding for the project, with Ennis Chamber as promoter.
I know some of you are reading this and thinking why has our Chamber got involved, never mind led on this project? The only cost to us was my time and we will carry payment of the artists and materials for a month before being reimbursed. So, fear not, your membership dues haven’t been used.
The goodwill this project has generated around town and on social media is phenomenal. As I write this, #EverybodyLovesEnnis is trending at No 7 in Ireland on twitter and that’s thanks to 6 pieces of totally amusing Drain Art! Who would have thought it?
With lots of media interest please expect plenty of positive coverage over the next few weeks.
We are so delighted with the success of this project that today we commissioned 4 more, to bring the trail to a nice roundy figure of 10. (I have yet to figure out where I’ll get the funding – but don’t worry I will!).
When you create something of interest for children in the town centre, you attract parents and grandparents too. This creates footfall and spend. And that’s why Ennis Chamber has stepped boldly forward to commission this project.
Thanks to Tina for inspiration, to Creative Ireland for funding and to the businesses who are promoting it across their social media platforms.
I would like to pay tribute to our two wonderful artists Giordana Giache and Martin Shannon, pictured in the attached.
