FRAMED! MY LIFE IN PICTURES
A note by Eamon Henry. 12 May 2010

A project in creative writing has been completed by nine members of the Active Senior IT Society (ASITS), under the direction of Mr. Rick Quinn, at the Terenure Enterprise Centre (TEC). Entitled “Framed! My Life in Pictures”, the result comprises a booklet covering four aspects of each writer’s life, namely:

*Childhood;
*Love is;
*My working life;
*Older and bolder.

The “Childhood” section has a page of descriptive writing by each of the nine writers and by Rick himself, with a relevant photo at the top of each page. The other three sections follow a similar pattern. A further writer has covered the last two of the four sections.
The eleven writers involved, six women and five men, come from a wide range of backgrounds, urban, rural, and country-town. Their life experience is extremely interesting, in its variety of events and conditions over the past 60 or 70 years, as so skillfully described by them.

An exhibition of photographed pages from the booklet is on display at Terenure Library from May 11th to May 15th, before moving to Ballyroan Library on May 24th.
The visual layout of prints for the exhibition was done by Mr. Patrick Lyons.
The exhibition was officially opened by Cllr. Emer Costello, Lord Mayor of Dublin, on the morning of Tuesday 11th May, 2010, as a partial celebration of the Bealtaine Festival.
Also present at the exhibition opening were Cllr. Edie Wynn and other members of the TEC Board of Directors, as well as the ASITS Committee. Ms. Michelle Hannon, Manager of TEC, welcomed the Lord Mayor. Some forty guests in all were present.

The Lord Mayor, in her opening address, reminded her listeners of the important role of the Dublin City and County Libraries over many years, in entertaining and educating thousands of people by what they had to offer. She congratulated the writers and all involved in making this exhibition possible.
This special project in creative writing may hopefully become a blueprint for similar projects by older people, not just in Dublin, but much more widely. It may come to be a significant contribution by ASITS to the cultural life of people living in Dublin and elsewhere. It might also show yet another way of making people more aware of their being members of a local community, and not just isolated individuals. This applies more especially to older people.