Evocative and explanatory script for the Chester Beatty Library’s core visitor experience video.
“Here you can journey across continents and leap through centuries…”
The script was also the basis for the Library’s marketing campaign and nationwide radio ads.
In May 2015 Ireland made history by becoming the first country in the world to vote in favour of marriage equality in a referendum.
“We voted YES for every voice that came before
And YES for every generation yet to come”
This video script for the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade marks the 10th anniversary of that fateful vote and remembers a landmark day in Ireland, when love, respect and equal rights got a resounding ‘YES’.
Video script for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to commemorate 100 years of Irish-US diplomatic relations.
“When opportunity called from your shores and our land offered little, the United States became a refuge for countless Irish seeking new beginnings”
An important milestone in the two nations’ diplomatic relations, the script reminds us of the steadfast ties that still bind us.
Kicking off a landmark centenary year for Cork and its role during the War of Independence, in collaboration with creative/production agency bigO, I undertook the mammoth feat of putting the Rebel City’s story into words for the interactive exhibition, Cork 1920: The Burning of a City.
Hosted by historic venue and client, St Peter’s Cork, this year-long exhibition uncovered thought-provoking stories, archival material, rare photographs and compelling witness statements surrounding an unprecedented chapter in the city’s history.
A hugely tumultuous year in Cork City’s lifespan, 1920 was the second year of the War of Independence. It saw two Lord Mayors die tragically, martial law imposed and the British Crown forces’ image of invincibility wane. A shocking end to an already tension-filled year, 1920 came to a head with the devastating burning of the city on 11 December, which saw British Auxiliaries burn acres of the city centre, destroying lives, homes and businesses. The burning of Cork is considered the most extensive single act of vandalism during Ireland’s nationalist struggle.
Through months of meticulous research, my role was to devise the exhibition’s narrative, consider which elements would best resonate with its audience, remain faithful to history and craft copy that would leave a lasting impact on the reader while seamlessly fitting the context in which it would be absorbed.
Via panels of carefully-composed copy, photography and an array of audio-visual material and video, the exhibition’s aim was to shine a spotlight on the Cork of 100 years ago and the arduous struggles its people faced.
On entering the space, the visitor’s first interaction with the content was through a freestanding, LED-illuminated introductory panel. This panel grounded the whole exhibition, giving much-needed historic context from the outset. With so much information to grasp before the timeline of the exhibition even unfolded, this panel had to give a snapshot of Cork’s palpable powder keg atmosphere in 1920 and pique the visitor’s curiosity.
A series of hanging muslin panels, displaying foam boards of compelling text, evocative quotes and arresting imagery then guided the visitor through the space. Essentially acting as soft walls that contained the visitor and focused their attention on the content before them, the muslin panels created a pathway through the space.
To effectively tell the complex Cork 1920 story in a way that would engage and impact the visitor, the hanging panels were grouped into thematic chapters. This allowed us to chronologically detail exactly what the visitor needed to have understood about Cork’s political climate, local life in 1920, Ireland under colonial rule and the major players in the War of Independence.
All of this needed to be understood before they reached the climax of a five-acre city-centre arson attack at the hands of British forces.
The panel text needed to be concise, engaging, apolitical but dynamic and of course, include the odd cliff-hanger. I strategically crafted this content after much research and generous access to University College Cork’s Special Collections Unit and its many witness statements, handwritten documents, rare publications, historic reports and more.
Panel text needed to be concise, engaging, apolitical but dynamic and of course, include the odd cliff-hanger
Exceptional and rarely-seen photographs were curated from collections courtesy of Cork Public Museum and lauded Cork historian Michael Lenihan. With the hanging panels’ layout grouping powerful text, eye-catching pull quotes and captivating photographs together in batches of three or four – the visitor couldn’t fail to be immersed in the story woven around them, the three types of content working in impactful tandem.
To better translate the scale of one Cork figure’s global impact, a map of the world was created and spanned across one of the space’s walls. I then wrote batches of short, punchy text to pepper the map with, detailing the impressive reach of Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney’s influence on the likes of America, India, South Africa and beyond.
With so much information to present the visitor with, the exhibition team decided that some of the more compelling elements deserved standalone presentations. Two bespoke audio-visual boxes were designed to display immersive video content to really transport the visitor into certain chapters of the Cork 1920 story.
For the video, A Night to Remember, 11 December 1920, we selected choice audio and testimonies from the very people who witnessed the burning. Coupled with powerful text overlay and arresting archive footage, this video immediately transported the viewer to that fateful night.
The Rebel Women video script started life as panel copy but was later streamlined into dynamic video text, elevating the pursuits and risks taken by Cork’s daring women.
A companion piece for the exhibition, I also scripted a social media video commemorating the centenary of Lord Mayor Tomás Mac Curtáin’s death.
To highlight the role of the women of Cork in 1920, I wrote a 3,500-word feature for the Irish Examiner. The piece was printed in the paper’s commemorative centenary supplement in March 2020.
For media coverage of the exhibition’s opening, see Cork Beo and The Irish Times.
An all-island tourism initiative, Great Lighthouses of Ireland is the consumer-friendly face of the country’s coastal guardians, Commissioners of Irish Lights.
Since 2015 I’ve been copywriting, content managing and curating content campaigns for this evocative lighthouse brand. Showcasing the visitor experiences and overnight accommodation options on offer to consumers across its 14 lighthouses/lighthouse attractions, through inspiring content I cast the spotlight towards these coastal beams.
The website’s countless stories have delved into everything from the duties of lightkeepers back in the day, to just where you can fill your social feed with like-worthy snaps.
Content campaigns have included the NI Heritage Lottery Fund ‘Legends of the Lighthouse‘ film bursary, a charity storybook initiative, an online Christmas shop in the wake of COVID-19 and the unprecedented Young Storykeepers writing initiative.
In May 2020, Great Lighthouses of Ireland and Fighting Words asked children and young people to create lighthouse-inspired stories during COVID-19 lockdown. I devised the Young Storykeepers content campaign which ran across the website and its social channels from May – December 2020. I crafted strategic social posts and curated bespoke landing pages and imagery for the content, including video assets, to live on.
I also managed the creation of print assets launching the initiative in the Irish Times, curated the imagery for a free downloadable colouring book, selected and sourced all the campaign imagery.
This campaign helped garner over 1,200 children’s submissions – resulting in a five-volume digital magazine showcased on the site.
I curated and created a bespoke landing page and individual offers for the website’s online Christmas shop in 2020. This showcased products and experiences available to buy from the brand’s partners despite the COVID-19 lockdown in place.
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.
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.
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.
What if an audience from outside of Ireland were invited to embrace the famed Wild Atlantic Way of life? Say, an audience from a galaxy far far away?
To coincide with the release of the hugely anticipated eighth Star Wars instalment, 2017’s Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, the Wild Atlantic Way stepped into the limelight in Fáilte Ireland’s atmospheric and intergalactic content campaign.
For the Wild Atlantic Way site I co-wrote the content for an extraterrestrial-themed landing page – perfectly suited to the intergalactic enthusiast, the Star Wars fan and the potential west coast tourist alike.
With Star Wars mania reaching fever pitch and as several Wild Atlantic Way hotspots were to feature in the film, myself and the content team at bigO devised this Star Wars-specific landing page to brim with unique, out-of-this-world content.
With the overall campaign’s highlight an otherworldly cinema ad, the website’s written content followed the ad’s unusual concept. That being that the Wild Atlantic Way is so exceptional that even visitors from outer space want to make the journey. On this landing page, users were not only greeted with evocative descriptions and stunning imagery, they could also, at the touch of a button, translate this content into a strange alien language. Why? For interplanetary kicks, of course.
Anchoring the user’s space-themed visit were a number of hero articles that mixed tongue-in-cheek humour and practical information with incredible imagery guaranteed to give people the travel bug.
“The underwater ambassador in these parts is a ‘dolphin’ (/ˈdɒlfɪn/) named Fungie and is a very welcoming being indeed.”
A Space Traveller’s Guide to the Wild Atlantic Way, which I co-wrote, introduces the concept of the Wild Atlantic Way and its earthly charms to would-be tourists from other galaxies.
While my Intergalactic Itinerary gave the inside track on which headlands were recently home to Jedi temples and which coastal corners doubled as distant planets.
“The Force was felt as far south as West Cork too when beautiful Brow Head near Crookhaven was the site of much filming buzz. Roam the landscape and you’ll soon discover why it provided such interstellar inspiration.”
Being Irish is more complicated, more diverse and more interesting than we might sometimes acknowledge.
The 2016 Easter Rising centenary commemorations offered an opportunity to explore these intricacies with a once-in-a-lifetime invitation to everyone.
Unsurprisingly, by late 2015 with the centenary year looming, economic storms, divisive violence and ideological hijacking had left many of us feeling uneasy or apathetic about where our place was in these upcoming commemorations.
Helming the Government’s metaphorical centenary shopfront, what was then Ireland.ie, my role as the site’s content manager and writer meant that every word, image and subheading had to be deliberated over and viewed from every angle.
Working with creative/production agency bigO, I had a compact team of junior writers to manage and a keen understanding of our duty to write potentially politically-charged content with a distinctly neutral voice. Manoeuvring around missteps was a daily task. And that was before departmental approval, Irish language translations and actual content publishing even came into it.
The website content I wrote, managed and curated over late 2015 and into the whole of 2016 was engaged with and shared at home and abroad. At the centenary’s height, Ireland.ie saw almost one and half a million visits.
With the Ireland 2016 Programme Team engaging with partners such as local authorities, government agencies and cultural and educational institutes, the centenary’s enormous calendar of events was a daunting one to represent online. Added to that, the fact that every piece of content had to be translated into Irish – delivered to the translators via a special CMS plugin, and then uploaded and published separately; every task was really two rolled into one. And every tweak to copy? Well, that really had to be worth making and sending back for translation.
Over the lifespan of the project, I liaised daily with the Department’s internal team and stakeholder partners to write, source imagery for and upload the 1,000+ commemorative event descriptions that took place worldwide, from Ahascragh to Australia.
The website’s flagship content was the 100+ historic stories and engaging news items I researched, wrote and curated across the year. With incredible access to the eyewitness statements, personal letters and military accounts in Óglaigh na hÉireann’s Military Archives, I was able to shine a light on the Rising leaders’ poignant Last Letters, Last Words with specially crafted content.
Through detailed research and generous access to imagery from the National Library of Ireland, I also curated content remembering the 40 civilians under the age of 16 who lost their lives in the Rising’s conflict with The Children of 1916.
To coincide with the anniversaries of the Rising leaders’ deaths, I created the commemoration-specific landing page, The Executed, and wrote subtle but emotive copy in remembrance. Each piece of content was published on the individual anniversary, meaning the page was populated day by day – adding to the content’s impact.
The website content was also kept fresh by commissioning several articles from well-known historians, writers and academics across the year.
During the height of the commemorations at Easter 2016, Ireland.ie received a staggering 1.25 million page views
I also scripted a number of the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme’s many videos, commemorating a wealth of historic moments and initiatives, from important dates to cultural events.
The Ireland.ie site won the Best in Public Service award at the 2017 Digital Media Awards; and both Best Arts and Culture Website and Best Website in Ireland at the Realex Web Awards 2016.
Sarah Folan
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