For the fourth year running, Belfast Lough Sea & Shore and Laganside Corporation have hosted a wonderful project for primary school children from North Down Borough Council (Towerview PS, St. Malachy's PS, & Bangor Central Integrated PS),
Newtownabbey Borough Council (Whitehouse PS, St. James' PS, & Glengormley Integrated PS) and Carrickfergus Borough Council (Carrickfergus Central PS, St. Nicholas PS & Acorn Integrated PS) to raise environmental awareness of the Lough and adjacent shoreline through a cross-community exercise.
The children took two field trips to explore the Lough - one boat trip in Belfast around the Lough (the children saw Harland and Wolff � where the Titanic was built) and one to the shoreline exploring their local beach. Four artists then visited the children. Adrian Rice (Poet & project co-ordinator) first met with the children to encourage and inspire poetry about what they had experienced on their trips. Then artist Phil O' Hanlon and Helen Crossey visited the children to get them painting and drawing what they saw. Lastly, American dramatist, Molly Freeman, took the children's poetry and scripted it into a poetry presentation for a performance by six children on the award-giving night.
Each year the project has been successfully launched in local venues where each child received their poem, edited by Adrian Rice, and nicely presented in a wallet.
The project ends with a book publication. The children's anthologies have in the past represented the work produced while working with the artists. These anthologies are first class and have been given to dignitaries when they visit Northern Ireland.
The first book was Life of the Lough: An Anthology of Children's Poetry, edited by Adrian Rice, published in June 1999. Two boys and two girls' poems were chosen from Towerview, St. Malachy's, St. James', Whitehouse, Lourdes, Central, Orangefield & St. John the Baptist Girls.
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