In a new project, artists depict the lives of young people in Dublin 15 through photos, paint, songs and more

John Nee was paired with a seven-week-old baby for his bit in the art project now running at Draíocht, the Blanchardstown arts centre.

But he wasn’t daunted by the challenge – he felt fortunate, he says.

Sure, baby Emily didn’t have language, says the Glasgow-born musician and writer. “But that makes you focus on the whole process of her hearing, because everything is building as they go along at that age.”

Nee, who performs under the moniker Little John Nee, was one of 23 artists asked to depict a young person living in Dublin 15 as part of NEST, a multi-disciplinary series, which is running until 16 March.

For his composition about Emily, Nee sat down a few times with her parents, Edouard Chamussy and Andreea Balint. “And they just told me this story. It was such an amazing story.”

The story was how they met after a seagull emptied its bowels on Chamussy’s head in Phoenix Park, he says. “He turned to her and asked for a tissue. They might not have met otherwise.”

The randomness, the sheer luck, captivated him, he says.

“We look at shooting stars and say, ‘Wow, what a sign’,” he says. “Something like a seagull’s shit might not be regarded as the most auspicious thing. But they met, they fell in love.”

His musical retelling of the encounter is performed with guitars, vintage keyboards, a harmonium and toy instruments, he says. “It’s a comic version of the story about a seagull from the west of Ireland who goes up to Stephen’s Green.”

Social histories

On the first floor of Draíocht, the centre’s press manager, Nicola Murphy, wanders around a photo exhibition, another art piece born from the NEST project.

This part of the series, titled “You, Me, Us”, was created by photographer Liadh Connolly with 153 students from Dublin 15.

Each of the children posed for solo portraits and group shots, set against colourful backdrops. The wall behind the images is lined with handwritten notes from their workshops with Connolly.

It’s a celebration of the young people in and around Dublin 15, Murphy says. “It’s showing them that this is their community.”

NEST grew out of a previous project called “Home”, says Nee. “That involved about 30 artists, paired off with people of all ages, and I was paired off with a 10-year-old, and wrote a story about them.”

The subjects, referred to as hosts, were as young as 10 and as old as 90, says Veronica Coburn, NEST’s artistic director. “It was nearly like a social history of Blanchardstown and D15 in artistic form.”

When the centre repeated the project, they gave it a twist, says Coburn. “We thought what if all the hosts were children, and so now, our youngest is seven weeks, and our oldest is 22.”

It’s a lateral look at citizenship, she says. “If we look at the lives of our young people, it’s going to tell us how we are doing, and it’s saying our young people are interesting, they live lives of dimension, 360 degrees.”

“We have created the world that they live in,” she says, “and that’s where the idea of citizenship ties in with it. What is the world that we are handing them?”

A miscellany

On the ground floor below Connolly’s photo exhibition is a set of portraits, sketched and painted.

In one corner of the room, artist Dorothy Smith has put black and white illustrations of young boys next to square monochrome painted maps of their local neighbourhoods.

Several diptychs, painted by Una Sealy, depict her hosts in one frame and an item or place from their everyday in the second.

A girl with her hair tied in a ponytail is coupled with a sink and art supplies. A boy in his blue school uniform is next to a large woodworking machine.

Edouard Chamussy and Andreea Balint’s daughter Emily appears again as part of a 12-panel series painted by Zsolt Basti.

A figurative painter whose work often conveys a dream-like quality, Basti created portraits of six hosts and, like Sealy, put them alongside a personal object: paper cranes, headphones, a woollen hat, a camera.

He wanted to put each next to an item that was important to them, he says. “I really just wanted to let them pick their favourite companion piece.”

The process became a game, he says. “I would ask them what their favourite colour was, and if they said green, I would ask more, like a dark green or more a zingy green, and I would pick those colours for the background. It was easy.”

“I wanted to keep them happy,” Basti says. “Because kids, you know, they are looking for some kind of representation.”

The exhibitions will run here until 13 April.

NEST is also putting on performances tied to the series in March, Coburn says. “Of the 24 artists, some are playwrights, others are dancers, musicians.”

On 1 March, the artists are to perform their works all over the Dublin 15 area, at meaningful places for the hosts, she says. “In their homes, their schools, or their communities.”

Then, they are to premiere to the public as part of Draíocht’s Spréacha Soar Festival for Children and Young People from 11 to 16 March, she says.

Little John Nee plans to debut his musical in Emily’s family home, he says. “There’ll be some other babies there too, and adults, so I’ll be creating interesting sounds and visuals to stimulate them.”

“It’s a sort of gift for her,” he says.