Staff Reporter, 13 Nov
An award-winning artist from Northern Ireland whose designs have been
seen across the world has said it was a “real privilege” to design
charity Christmas cards for Women’s Aid NI.
Sara O’Neill is a celebrated artist whose designs have been seen worn
by U2 guitarist The Edge and onstage at the Oscars by creatives from An
Irish Goodbye.
Her work is inspired by Irish stories, folklore, history and women.
Ms O’Neill has already raised £9,000 for Women’s Aid NI this year
through selling the cards.
Last year she did a campaign with Women’s Aid that raised just under
£4,000 but Ms O’Neill said the demand for those cards inspired her to
up production for this year’s designs.
“This year, I knew that I wanted to kind of expand the whole Christmas
card thing because the demand had been so much last year, I thought
‘well, let’s try and get a few volunteers involved and let’s do
pre-orders to get a production line going’,” she said.
Women’s Aid is holding a volunteering event on Wednesday to help pack
the cards designed by Ms O’Neill and the artist said it was “a
privilege” to contribute to their work.
“I think we’ve got about 25 volunteers coming along next Wednesday,
we’ve got our pre-orders in, our sales so far are £9,000,” she said.
“So, that was in three days and there’s a few more things to come. I
would hope to raise probably over 10 grand, I would say, for this.
“Hopefully it can just go towards making some women and young people
and kids’ Christmas just a wee bit better.
“I know that Women’s Aid will spend the money in the best way possible
and, honestly, it means an awful lot. It’s a real privilege to be able
to help.
“For me, it just makes sense, it’s like, I love what I do and it just
makes sense to want to kind of give back, and hopefully just contribute
a wee bit more to society.”
There has not been a devolved government in Northern Ireland for nearly
two years due to the DUP’s ongoing boycott of power-sharing
institutions in protest against post-Brexit trading arrangements.
In the absence of an executive at Stormont the budget for 2023/24 was
set by Secretary of State Chris Heaton Harris and senior civil servants
have made around £980 million of budget cuts across departments.
Women’s Aid NI is set to have its core annual funding of some £140,000
cut in attempts to plug budget gaps.
Ms O’Neill said the lack of governmental support for Women’s Aid only
hardened her resolve to help them.
“That kind of just made me more determined than ever to kind of do as
much as I could for them because the whole situation here just makes me
very, very angry,” she said.
“It angers me so much that people here are let down constantly by our
politics, it really, really annoys me that we have no assembly.
“I don’t think that the assembly, I don’t think Stormont, can fix
everything, but I do think it could do something.
“I think that some sectors are in such dire straits that anything that
can be done needs to be done.
“I don’t like feeling angry, I don’t like feeling kind of helpless. So,
I like to try and channel all that energy into something.”
Ms O’Neill first became involved with Women’s Aid while she was working
on a print called The Dreamer featuring a character inspired by the
textile workers of Belfast – Millie – and the character appears on the
2023 Christmas card design.
“It was basically my kind of celebration of the Millies of Ulster, so
basically the textile workers, because working-class women often get
completely written out of history, they never get included in history
in the first place,” she said.
“Obviously, linen and the textile industry was massively important to
the success of this place in any sort of economic kind of a way through
history, through the last couple of centuries.”
She added: “I wanted to kind of celebrate them, but as well, because
obviously working in the mill, it was difficult, it was dirty, it was
horrible work. I didn’t kind of want to romanticise that in any way.
“I wanted to create an entire little character for my Millie, so she
would have kind of dreams and ambitions.”
The original Millie print went on to be displayed in the Ulster Museum
and a sample of the design raised more than £5,000 for Women’s Aid at
auction.
Ms O’Neill said nobody expected the sale to raise as much as it did.
“It was kind of testament to how much people loved Millie and so for
me, then Millie and Women’s Aid were completely linked because I sort
of thought, ‘well, if I am going to be inspired by the women of here to
create this character that I want to give back to the women of here’
and that just makes sense to me,” she said.