Our News (2021)

a series

In National Schools around Ireland - in the 1980s and 1990s, at least - teachers used to do ‘Our News’ with their pupils. It must have been a way to focus attention and redirect all the great ‘news’ each child wanted to tell the teacher that day:

“ Miss Miss Miss my uncle got a new tractor! ”

“ Miss Miss Miss my godmother is getting married in England ”

And so the teacher would write up all the news on the blackboard, sometimes in English, sometimes in Irish, and the class would copy it down. And sometimes we would draw a picture.

“ Teresa got new tights ”

“ Nigel went to the bog ”

“ Ashley is getting a new puppy ”

During Lockdown, to make my friend laugh, I did one ‘Our News’. I thought it was really funny that nobody is doing anything so we have no news. Then I kept going with it like a daily diary. There were a few reasons. Mainly it made me laugh, but I also thought there was something interesting about commemorating small, mundane news when we were being heavily bombarded with extremely anxiety inducing media News every hour. Another reason was I remembered the actor/writer Mikel Murfi says every artist should do another creative activity they aren’t supposed to be good at. To loosen you up and access the play part of your brain. I am hopeless at drawing so I found permission to be ‘bad’ very freeing.

I did one every day from 28th March 2020 to 28th March 2021 and posted them on social media. In 2023 I revived the series in a smaller way with ‘Our News Weekly’ and ‘Our News: In Profile’.

Thanks to my teachers at Paddock National School for teaching me this important life skill. Miss Fogarty (Baby Infants) and Miss Fitzpatrick (Senior Infants to Second Class).