By Peadar King

FROM the outside, Skibbereen’s red-painted 49 North Street is a nondescript enough building. Over two red doors reads: No 49 North Street, above which paint peels in what was a blisteringly hot summer morning. And that’s it.

At first glance not that much different to the buildings on either side. Just part of the town’s streetscape. A place where once the people of Skibbereen and West Cork thought a safe place to bank their money (Irish Nationwide Building Society – perhaps in retrospect not the safest place to bank one’s money, given that it suffered financial losses in excess of €6bn and was liquidated in 2013). Before that, in September 1888, it was known as Tweeds Coatings Hats Shop of John J O’Connell (which the library staff here in Skibbereen kindly sourced for me).

Now it is a an altogether different kind of safe place. It also has another quirky if unrelated history as once being the home of Martin Walley, the father of Chris Walley of the Young Offenders’ fame.

For the past decade, No 49 North Street has opened its doors to all those seeking a place where they can be whatever and however they wish to be. It is a place of refuge for artists and activists, those in recovery and those supporting others, women and men across the ages from Skibbereen and across West Cork or further afield. Here is a safe space. An open space, A welcoming space. A creative space. A democratic space. A caring space.  And more.

It is one of the many extraordinary contradictions of our era and one I have written about previously in this paper. We have never been so connected but never so isolated. ‘Loneliness is still prevalent despite the famous warmth of West Cork’ (December 16th, 2024). Perhaps the most telling indication of loneliness is suicide. A feeling of being lost to and in the world.

The most recent Central Statistics Office data indicates that 500 people died by suicide in 2022. These are our friends, families, neighbours, work colleagues, teammates, the people who sit next to us in pubs and cafés. While a well-thought through rational choice for some, for so many others a very different choice may very well have been made if only some supports were in place.

49 North Street Skibbereen. Photo; Anne MInihane.

No 49 North Street is that if only space. From Drinagh, a former Cork County Council librarian works as a volunteer in that if only space. As we talk, she casts away with her knitting needles (size 10 if you must know), all the time unspooling the softest of soft lemon yarn; an art she learned many years ago at the Pike National School in Lisavaird.

Now every Monday morning she teaches knitting to a group, one as young as 23 (and yes, there are men in the group too, one of whom made a hat for himself) while weaving conversations that matter.

My guess is that knitting is as good a conversational facilitator as any, I suggest, and recall seeing President Mary McAleese sitting with a group of women, members of the Travelling community, all knitting.  One of the artefacts collectively created by the group was of the Celtic goddess Danu which was their entry to the West Cork Feelgood Festival, now in its 14th year that runs in Ballydehob, Ballineen/Enniskeane, Bandon, Bantry and surrounding areas, Kealkill, Bere Island, Beara, Clonakilty, Dunmanway, Leap, Rosscarbery, Skibbereen and surrounding areas. Their work has also featured at the Leap Scarecrow Festival.

Kevin O'Shanahan at 49 North Street in Skibbereen. Photo; Anne Minihane.

 As we talk knitting, Slip 1, Knit1, Pass the Slipped Stitch Over the Knit Stitch, we are joined by musician and nurse specialist (in mental health & the arts) Kevin O’Shanahan, whom I guess is the director of the centre, although that seems altogether too hierarchical a description, and spoken-word artist, writer and musician Moze Jacobs originally from The Netherlands and ‘here since the last century’.

‘This is a creative space for mental health recovery and well-being,’ they tell me. ‘Ours is an innovative approach that confronts the stigma attached to mental illness.’

That innovative approach to their work is grounded in critical contemporary research on how we can live well within this neurodiverse world. Live well. Live at ease. Live with respect. Live in peace. And not just with our own species. But with all species.

Moze talked about doughnut economics; what it means for humanity to thrive in the 21st century.  First referenced in 2012 by Oxford economist Kate Raworth, her work has inspired 49 North Street in the planting of 1,000 trees in Skibbereen’s Community Hospital Garden as part of Sustainable Skibbereen and its work with Machnamh, CycleSense, Green Skibbereen, SECAD, the Biodiversity Plan group, Green Economy Foundation, Ballydonut, Family Resource Centre, Lisheens House and Skibbereen library.

Kevin talked about the importance of the work of Dr Pat Bracken, retired director of the Mental Health Service in West Cork, and previously Professor of Philosophy, Diversity and Mental Health at the University of Central Lancashire in shaping his thinking and his work.

‘It seems (to me),’ Bracken wrote ‘that while we are comfortable working with individuals and organisations who accept the medical framing of mental problems, we are less willing to contemplate working with critical service users’. It is that work with critical service users that stand 49 North Street apart.

Time to go. The tea served remains untouched and cold. That’s sometimes what happens when the conversation flows. I gather up my notes and leave through the front room and the door I entered. But I have to wait. Here the music is flowing.

 I’ll tell me Ma when I go home getting the full treatment. Neurodiversity in full swing. Up to 15, perhaps 20 people in the room. One woman was dancing in the middle of the room. Her smile is infectious. I too leave smiling.

Later this month, (Saturday July 25th), 49 North Street will celebrate ten years of service to the people of West Cork culminating with a keynote address by Pat Bracken at Skibbereen Town Hall.

See www.skibbereenartsfestival.com for further details.