A young Jack Kerrigan, the subject of ‘A Boy from the North West’, with friends in Bundoran
‘Building a Ballet’ RTE Lyric Feature. Dancer Joan Wilson and Ben Stevenson in The National Ballet Company’s Careless Love, choreographed by Patricia Ryan.
In 2024, I wrote, produced & presented ‘Building a Ballet’, a Lyric Feature for RTE Lyric FM, which tells the story of the women behind a forgotten ballet school. Funded by Sound & Vision scheme and RTE, this was first broadcast on Mother’s Day March 11, 2024. This documentary won Bronze in the category of Best Arts, Music & Culture Documentary at the IMRO Awards in October 2024.
As writer and researcher, I partnered with producer Susan Dennehy to make a 50-minute docu-drama, ‘A Boy from the North West – The Jack Kerrigan Story’, funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) Sound and Vision Scheme.
The documentary tells the story of Donegal-man Jack Kerrigan, one of the members of Ireland’s first Paralympic team in 1960. Jack’s memoirs, brought to life in the documentary by the actor Mikel Murfi, are a poignant account of what it was like to be a wheelchair user in Ireland in the 50s & 60s.
The documentary can be podcast from the Newstalk website at http://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/Documentary_on_Newstalk
This documentary won Silver for Best Documentary at the 2016 PPI RADIO AWARDS.
I undertook script & research work on ‘Letters from Midwinter’, a radio documentary with producer Susan Dennehy, based around women’s private letters 1970-2020, and funded by BAI with additional support from An Post. This can also be podcast from Documentary on Newstalk at the link above. This documentary won Silver at the New York Festival Awards 2021.