Miss Harrison, Rachel Galvin, Joan Freeman, Eva Dowling, Marita Conlon McKenna, Fiona Murray and Mount Anville school principal Liz Caffrey.

What  a fun way to celebrate International Women’s Day in the company of huge crowd of wonderful young women, the  4^th, 5^th and 6^th year students in Mount Anville Secondary School, Goatstown, Dublin. It was a huge privilege to be invited to take part in a panel discussion with a multi-talented group of inspirational women.

It was great to meet the incredible Joan Freeman, a former Senator, who founded Pieta House which does so much to help prevent suicide by providing counselling and other services for all those in need of help and support. It now has twelve centres in Ireland. Also on the panel was Fiona Murray, who helps to run the Special Olympics which brings joy to so many people who take part in its training and programmes all over the world. She is so dedicated to helping these special athletes take part and achieve their goals in the sports they love.

 Eva Dowling is a Green party Councillor for Stillorgan and spoke about her own journey and how important it is for young woman to get involved in politics if we ever hope to achieve  a better  balance of female TD’s in the Dail. She was an inspiration to us all. Then there was Rachel Galvin aka Rachel Galvo, a social influencer who spoke of her life in theatre from her early days in school to joining the musical Drama Society in College to, getting accepted to a London Theatre College, and her quest to develop a satisfying and rewarding career. Funny and witty, we all loved her exuberance and honesty about the ups and downs of trying to achieve her ambitions with plans for her very own stage show in Dublin in the autumn.  

Thank you so much to Kate Fallon and all the sixth years and Ms Harrison for inviting me to take part in such a brilliant celebration of International Women’s Day.

As 2024 starts it is great to be working on a new book and planning lots of lovely projects.  I’ve also made a vow to try and take in more art, theatre and film in the year ahead.

I managed to finally get to the big Andy Warhol Exhibition ‘Three Times Out’ in Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery.  It is well worth a visit as it is made up of 250 works by this iconic artist. 72 0f these have been loaned by The Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation. From this collection Schnitzer has facilitated more than 180 exhibitions in 120 museums across America which bring in kids and seniors and under privileged visitors to see the work.  He gets joy from sharing the works and it is part of his philanthropic activities. The foundation has up to eight or nine exhibitions travelling globally around the world at one time. 

From Warhol’s Campbell’s soup tin screen prints which were inspired by his family eating the soup almost every day as they were poor, to his striking images of Marilyn Monroe and Chairman Mao Zedong and Jackie Kennedy. His work is insightful and he had a huge realisation of the power of colour, print and simple strong imagery and media. Seeing his wallpaper of Mao and his electric chair images you are aware of his incredible instinct as an artist about history and history makers.

The exhibition only runs for another few days so get your skates on as it closes on 27^th January.