Our leaders explained some of the events already planned for Feel Good Fortnight. They said we could organise our own events or contribute to and help already planned events.
We did some large group and small group discussions and brainstorming. Different ideas were suggested such as bake sale or car wash. In the end we decided to be involved in 4 things.
Make a caterpillar and butterfly costume for the launch parade. The idea was to make something fun and colourful and reflected the change we as young people are going through
Do a window display in one of the empty shops in town (FGF organisers were approaching different community groups to take a window and decorate it. Each would have a different colour)
Help serve organisers at the two main family events ‘Take it to the Streets’ and ‘Family Fun at the Fort’ by supervising games and helping practically.
Doing ‘Colourful Characters of Buncrana’ interviews with and photographing people on the streets during ‘Take it to the Street’ (like ‘Humans of New York’ fb site) to get personal stories. These stories we thought might go on a fb page or be printed out and displayed at the ‘Family Fun at the Fort’ event
We took several regular club nights to work on construction of costumes and window display.
The Caterpillar: We created a large caterpillar to use in the parade, made from voile and hula hoops. Andrew, our leader, helped us with ideas of how we could make our costumes and with technical advice. We tie-dyed the fabric and learnt how to do that. We used a glue gun and other basic tools to make the caterpillar. In the end we decided that we would not have the time to do a butterfly as well, so concentrated only on the caterpillar,
We also created a colourful Foroige banner for the parade by covering a sheet with dripped paint and spatters of paint and hand prints,
The whole group was involved in these projects.
On the parade day there was a great turnout of helpers and even some parents joined the parade. We walked up the main street and a lot of people watched,
The Window Display: The Feel Good Fortnight theme this year was “Show your Colours” and the FGF organisers gave us the colour ‘purple’. We debated over the ideas for the window project. Adam suggested ‘Super Nova’ and we developed a space theme. We also discussed ideas of how to make the display. As we didn’t know which shop we would have, we had to create separate items that could be assembled on site. We used play balls and plastic bottles and containers to make planets, meteors, space stations and rockets and sprayed them with paint. Our background was a black plastic sheet spray painted and spattered to look like space. A few days before FGF started Darragh and Sarah worked with our leader Andrew went to the shop to hang all the items in the window.
Helping with the Family Fun events: We did not have to do much preparation for these events. The games and equipment were provided by FGF organisers and were simple to supervise which was good because most of our group were not able to attend these events because of family holidays and other commitments.
Niamh and Patrick helped did crafts on the ‘Take it to the Streets’ day. They also helped the Buncrana Foroige Junior Club with their litter collection and with supervising games. There was also live music and dancing on the streets, a barbecue on the streets that day.
Sarah, Niamh, Patrick and Darragh helped out at the ‘Family Fun at the Fort’ event by supervising games for the children. There were a good number of families at the beginning of the event, but the weather turned really wet and windy and few remained till the end. There were lots of activities at the event: Games, live music, photo booth, free plants, arts and crafts, barbecue and refreshments.
‘Colourful Characters of Buncrana’: We had an idea to do “People of Buncrana”. But unfortunately as so many of the group could not make the events and we were so busy with other things that we did not get around to it.
Section completed by: Darragh, Niamh, Patrcik, Sarah and Stella
