Community art highlights poverty in Mayo town

Members of the Westport community gathered in the Town Hall today for an unveiling of community art by local artist, Mags Duffy.

The piece was commissioned by Westport Family and Community Resource Centre as part of a project for International Day for the Eradication of Poverty 2022.

Last November the centre hosted a ‘Community Conversation - Understanding Poverty’ workshop bringing together people living and working in the Westport community.

The workshop was organised to mark this important United Nations Day and tied in with the Irish campaign theme “Respecting the Dignity of all Humanity: End Persistent Poverty”.

The workshop, facilitated by Anna livia Cullinan sought to generate a greater awareness and understanding of poverty, looking at attitudes, misconceptions, biases, and barriers.

It also looked at the notion of the deserving poor and the discrimination and judgement people experience. Artist Mags Duffy participated in the workshop and took the experiences, thoughts, and frustrations of those in the room and created a piece of art to depict the day.

The openness and honesty of the participants made for powerful and thought-provoking material.

Today's community art event highlighted the often hidden nature of poverty due to the shame and stigma that can surround it.

The Family Resource Centre is a community development organisation and they work from the perspective that inequality, poverty, injustice and social exclusion exists everywhere, even in areas that are considered to be successful and thriving.

“The choices and decisions for those living in poverty are different, there are less opportunities, less social capital and their experience has many obstacles and challenges.

"We also must recognise that poverty likely looks different now in a modern era as to how we might think of it,” explained FRC co-ordinator Leanne Barrett before encouraging participants to support the national add the 10th campaign which seeks to have socio-economic discrimination recognised as the 10th ground of discrimination in Irish equality legislation.

The Resource Centre wanted to continue the initial conversation and bring the topic to life through art form.

The piece entitled “A Postcard from Westport” acts as a powerful, lasting and visual way to engage people.

Workshop participant Paddy Guthrie recited an original piece of poetry “The Bite."

The event also heard from the workshop facilitator who reiterated the importance of talking about the issue and not allowing it to be hidden, as well as the many supports and groups operating locally to assist people.

“This issue is complex and multi-faceted but one phrase from the day still resonates with me: “Poverty is not a choice!”. It is experienced by many in our community, we just don’t talk about it. I hope this art work will serve to continue and open new conversations about poverty, as well as give voice to unseen and unheard experiences.” stated Mags Duffy before unveiling her piece.

The postcard format of the piece represents the common view of Westport as a pretty as a picture town, it shows scenes from the town with text portraying the voices of the workshop participants. Certain words are enlarged and highlighted to capture the emotion and themes of the day, and some words are redacted to emphasise the often hidden nature of poverty.

The piece will be on display at Westport Town Hall Theatre for the month of April.

This project was funded by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection with public awareness funding.