Oscar for art of possible goes to . . . Ballyfermot

This article was first published on March 9th 2010

ON APRIL 4th, 1979, an advertisement appeared in the recruitment section of The Irish Times,looking for a principal for a new VEC school in Dublin – Ballyfermot Senior College. The advert noted that there was a "second extension of closing date – due to postal dispute".

Things in Ireland were pretty awful, with a nasty recession, industrial unrest and a public morality that would soon express itself in the elevation of Charles Haughey to taoiseach.

The new college nevertheless managed to get a damn fine principal, the inspiring historian, feminist and teacher Margaret MacCurtain (Sr Benvenuta – affectionately known as Sr Ben). It is now called Ballyfermot College of Further Education.

Four of its former students were up for Oscars on Sunday night – Tomm Moore for The Secret of Kells, Darragh O'Connell and Nicky Phelan for Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty,and Richie Baneham (who of course walked away with the trophy for best visual effects) for Avatar.

Obviously, Moore, O’Connell, Phelan and Baneham are extremely talented. Their work demands, alongside flair and inspiration, extraordinary effort, patience and persistence. Even a short animation film takes years to make. Their achievements are, in that sense, their own.

But as they themselves would be the first to acknowledge, they didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to make cartoons.

Irish animation is a deliberate social creation. We didn’t have a native tradition. It was partly created by the State, which, through the IDA, put a lot of public money into bringing the Sullivan Bluth and Murakami Wolf studios here in the 1980s.

Ballyfermot college, which initially ran its animation courses with Sullivan Bluth, was largely created by the local community. When Ballyfermot established its animation course in 1989, the money came from the European Social Fund and there were no fees for students. Without this public investment, there would be no Oscars.

We’re used to a model of economics that sees individual effort as being entirely separate from State and social action and entrepreneurship as being unconnected to the fight for social justice.

But what led to four Irish Oscar nominations in a field that barely existed in the country 25 years ago is actually the connection between these things.

Ballyfermot college didn’t come out of nowhere. Local people fought for it because the existing educational system was failing them. And “fought” is the operative word.

Tommy Phelan of the Ballyfermot Community Association was one of the prime movers in the establishment of the college.

In 1981, he told The Irish Timesthat the motivation was simple: "We started thinking eight or nine years ago when we looked at the children leaving school practically illiterate."

He explained that it had been a long and hard road getting the school established.

“Many obstacles were put in our way within the community. The college was financed by the World Bank as well as by the Department of Education, and people said the children would all become communists.”

Once, as Phelan sat out on Ballyfermot Road with a petition, his table was snatched away by the domineering local curate, the infamous Fr Michael Cleary.

It is striking that the big IDA-backed model of importing American animation studios ultimately failed.

Sullivan Bluth went bust in 1992 and Screen Animation, which emerged from the wreckage, lasted only until 1995.

The “cartoon Hollywood” that the IDA dreamed of creating in Ireland proved to be a mirage. But the college itself – including its animation courses – proved to be much more resilient.

It has helped to create and sustain a small, high-quality nexus of indigenous animation companies.

If this kind of energy could be unleashed in the miserable circumstances of 1979, something similar can surely happen now. It won’t happen, though, unless we understand where Ballyfermot’s success came from.

As a response to economic depression and poverty, it was the very opposite of what the Government is doing now. It was about development, not about slashing and burning. It was the community leaders in Ballyfermot who demanded that their children should have access to opportunity. As Phelan told The Irish Times, "The children should know that education is not a part of life. It is life."

Back in 1981, Sister Ben noted that with jobs so scarce, “young people must be so resourceful that they will find work, in co-operatives perhaps, or by striking out for themselves”. That is even more true today. Half of all jobs for young men under 25 have disappeared.

It is just as true, though, that “striking out for themselves” can mean, as it did in the 1980s, leaving a State that has failed them.

If it is not to mean that, communities have to demand, as the people of Ballyfermot did 30 years ago, a response to the crisis that’s about social, educational and economic development rather than a masochistic wallowing in so-called sacrifice. Instead of the cartoon economics we’re being offered, we need an engagement that genuinely animates our society.