Ireland is the first, and only, country in the world to have a national day of free creativity for children and young people under 18.
Under the Government’s Creative Ireland initiative and in partnership with the country’s 31 local authorities and RTÉ, this annual creative day – Cruinniú na nÓg – sees thousands of parents, families and young people enjoy a variety of fun, free, creative activities nationwide.
As a member of the creative content team for the Cruinniú na nÓg 2019 campaign, I was tasked with shining a spotlight on this national day of youthful creativity through copywriting, website and social media management.
Getting creative with content
Taking the idea that if you can’t see it, you can’t be it, the campaign amplified this message by placing young people and recognisable ‘Creative Heroes’ together in a series of social outputs, TV ads, social posts, articles, Instagram takeovers and photography.
For the Cruinniú na nÓg website, I wrote 15 articles (such as What’s on in Leinster, 12 Unmissable Events) previewing the day and driving user engagement, and drafted hundreds of unique event listings to boot.
I also profiled up and coming creatives like theatre-maker Dylan Coburn Gray, slam poet Natalya O’Flaherty, illustrator Cathal Duane and inclusive enterprise Izzy Wheels; in a revealing Creative Q&A series.
With children at the heart of the initiative, the campaign featured three young people as Creative Ambassadors. I showcased their creative habits and personal inspiration with short biographies on the website.
Showcasing on social
Part of the social team strategising the showcase of Cruinniú na nÓg’s web content and video outputs, I helmed the social management tool Falcon for a month-long awareness and engagement campaign.
A series of stylin’ social posts were shot and posted, like these ones featuring designers Nuala Goodman and Helen Steele.
Throughout the big day itself, I manned Creative Ireland’s Twitter account, live posting the video and imagery the campaign team were capturing in real time nationwide. These enthusiastic, reactive posts generated great user engagement and helped #CruinniúnNaÓg, #CruinniúToCreate and #MyCruinniú trend on Twitter all day.
The campaign was a massive success. In 2018 (which I had also content managed) there were 500 events registered on the website. In 2019, that number had grown to 780 – an increase of 56%. In total, the campaign’s content saw 1,350,708 completed video views across the website and social channels – an increase of over 600% on 2018’s views of 231,601.
On the event day itself, #CruinniúNanÓg trended on Twitter and audience participation was up 10% on the previous year
Cruinniú na nÓg, as well as a number of other Creative Ireland initiatives, also contributed to the programme being shortlisted as one of Europe’s most innovative citizenship projects at the prestigious European Innovation in Politics Awards in Berlin.
Sarah Folan 