New mural planned for Kildare town's busiest road
KCA's Noel Clare and Anne Cashman with a draft representation of the Kilcullen Heritage Wall mural
AN AMBITIOUS mural project unveiled in Kilcullen will, when completed, provide an eye-arresting feature at the Newbridge Road entrance to the town. The initiative — the Kilcullen Heritage Wall — is from Kilcullen Community Action, and the piece will include interpretations of many aspects of Kilcullen’s heritage, environment, and welcoming ethos.
The mural, expected to be in place in the spring, will complement several other artworks around the town, many of them KCA-sponsored.
The artwork will cover the entire double gables of a building now under refurbishment, which has been derelict for decades. KCA selected the artist following a tender process for a carefully developed brief.
A fundraising programme has been started for the work, centred around an iDonate page. “These things are quite expensive, and we will need grants and the support from the community to make it happen,” KCA chair Anne Cashman said at the launch event in Fallons of Kilcullen.
“But it is a beautiful, vibrant image and will be a fantastic piece of art to add to the town.”
KCA’s Noel Clare said the space is at one of the town's main traffic entrances.
“The building has been quite an eyesore, and it is wonderful to see it being done up now. But to have been allowed to develop this Heritage Wall project is something we wouldn’t have expected, and it is great to have it.”
Anne Cashman emphasised that the piece's representations are not yet final, and it can be tweaked before work actually begins.
“We now have a gold medal standard in Tidy Towns to live up to — we constantly have to engage and elevate ourselves, and this will be another great addition.”
The artistic team that won the commission, All Out Design, has more than 15 years’ experience in this kind of project, having created over 400 murals for Irish government bodies and major global corporations.
Their design theme is a Visual Story of Kilcullen, incorporating Local History & Heritage and Nature & Environment.
The draft design includes motifs of Kilcullen bridge, a horse, a stylised waving hand, the Liffey, swans, badgers and wildflowers. The whole execution is bold, modern and exciting.
