Poster company wants to 'turn the city purple' for Cork ARC Cancer House in new fundraiser
Windows is an exhibition of new work by digital media artist Elinor O’Donovan, displayed on Notes to Cork’s billboards around Cork City. Picture: Clare Keogh
When graphic designer and local billboard magnate Al Dalton issued a call out for a mystery project on Instagram earlier this week, the city's arts community went quietly abuzz.
Throughout the course of the lockdown, his Notes to Cork agency has used its some 200 billboard sites, dotted around the city and suburbs, to help foster community and care at a time when business from mainstream advertisers went quiet. The agency has worked/ working with the likes of RedFM, the Crawford Art Gallery and Cork Midsummer Festival to create walking trails and public art campaigns, in an intriguing new use of the former Poster Displays Cork slates.
Last night in an Instagram live stream, Dalton set out his next major project - decking out the family-run business's complement of poster spaces with a city-wide tribute to his aunt, former Poster Displays Cork boss Breda Dalton, who died as a result of stomach cancer in 2019.
"[Poster Displays Cork] was set up over 30 years ago by my grandfather", said Dalton on-stream last night, "and when he passed away, my aunt Breda took it over, running it from 2005 to 2019, when I took over, and we pivoted to Notes to Cork.
"Breda and me were inseparable, we did everything together. Last April, we'd planned to do something to celebrate her life, but because of quarantine, we couldn't travel, and it was a really, really hard moment, so I thought of a way to honour her memory while incorporating Notes to Cork.
"We reached out to the lovely Cork ARC Support House, and we got chatting, and on the 16th of April, we want to turn each of our billboards spaces around the city purple for Cork ARC."
For a donation of €20 or more, you can dedicate a message on one of these billboards around the city to someone you love. It's a deeply personal campaign, for all involved, rooted in a certain serendipity.
"The colour purple means a lot, for Cork ARC, as purple is 'their' colour, but also because it was Breda's favourite colour. So, we want to turn every one of our poster sites purple, and we want to do it for about two weeks," says Dalton.
"Last year, at Breda's funeral, someone said that she had smiling eyes, and anyone who knows us knows that a lot of Notes of Cork is Breda's energy, and we want to bring that energy to do something more inspiring, or creative than traditional advertising, to smile out to the city."
- To donate, and leave your message to your loved one in the comments, go to Notes 4 Cork ARC on GoFundMe.
