‘Light up our World at Horrorwe’en’ was the culmination of a five-week mask-making workshop with the service users at the NCBI’s Iona Centre and artist Eilis Murphy. The theme for these workshops was skulls, coinciding with the Otherworld Halloween festival in Ballymun.

In the initial stages, we looked at the different ways skulls are used around the world, focusing in particular on ‘The Day of the Dead’ in Mexico. From here the participants developed their own masks and cloaks using lightweight, transparent materials such as paper stretched over wire, bubble wrap, plastic mesh and crepe paper. The final stage of the masks was the addition of lights. These lights formed beautiful shadows and shapes, enhancing the original mask and complementing the other materials.

On the last day of the workshop, the group developed the character of their individual masks, exploring sounds and noises that it might make. These are captured on this video piece on You Tube http://www.youtube.com.watch?v=tgeFN6T8oW.

On Halloween evening, the group took part in the Otherworld Festival in Ballymun. This was a wonderful experience where we all got to dress up and show off our wonderful creations! Thanks again to Axis, Ballymun for sponsoring this project.