After 11 years of travelling by train to Dublin each week, Niamh Crowley realised Sligo needed its own academy of music.
The 23-year-old violinist has returned to Sligo after five years study at the Royal College of Music in London, where she graduated with first-class honours, and was last week awarded the Tagore gold medal for the most outstanding student by the college's patron, Prince Charles.
Niamh, along with another local musician, Lorna Horan, started the Sligo Academy of Music Ltd in October. They already have 128 children, aged five and six, from all over the county taking a pre-instrumental course. About 40 more had to be put on a waiting list.
Once the children have completed the pre-instrumental course, tuition in piano, violin, cello and music theory will start from next September.
Niamh began her musical training at the age of four and attended the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin from the age of six.
"I had to travel to Dublin every week for 11 years. I was lucky because I was an only child and my parents were able to bring me up and down. And my mother was a piano teacher, so she had the interest," she said.
She wants to give that opportunity to children who cannot get the same support from home.
Having played at the Paris Conservatoire, the Liszt Academy in Budapest and Cornell University in New York, Niamh said she "adores" her life as a musician.
She has worked with the National Symphony Orchestra, the RTE Concert Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and has toured Europe with the European Youth Orchestra.
While the new academy in Sligo has had no problem finding students, getting a stock of instruments was not so easy. This was one area in which Prince Charles offered to help.
Because the cost of instruments can deter many parents from sending children to music lessons, the academy will have its own instrument bank. The prince, when presenting Niamh with the Tagore gold medal last week, gave her the name of a contact in London who could help her find instruments.
"He was absolutely lovely and was really interested in what I was doing in Sligo. He was saying how much he loved Ireland and that he hoped to be able to visit Sligo again soon," she said.
The academy has also been given £5,000 from the IRMA Trust to buy instruments as part of a project linked to the residency in Sligo of the Vogler Quartet from Berlin.
A national appeal has been launched by the IRMA Trust for people to donate instruments hidden away in a cupboard or attic so that children can make use of them.
Buying instruments is an expensive business, although thankfully the academy won't need to acquire any violins like the one played by Niamh. Owned by the Royal College of Music in London, it is worth £60,000. The bow alone costs £15,000.