Blog One: Third class students at Salesian Primary School, Limerick introduce Meadhbh of the Woods

Meadhbh of the Woods was a collaboration between Third class of Salesian Primary School, Limerick, classroom teacher Lisa Bourke and three artists; composer Fiona Linnane, soprano Tríona Walsh and visual artist Claire Hurley. The project took place between January and June 2026 and was supported by the Creative Youth Arts Initiatives, TAP and BLAST.

The Salesian Primary School is a Catholic school in the Salesian tradition in Limerick city. It caters to boys and girls from Junior Infants to First Class, and to girls only from Second Class to Sixth Class. Salesian Primary School is an inclusive school and caters for children of all abilities. In January 2025, there were a total of 27 Teachers on the Staff including the Principal, 17 class teachers and 9 SEN (Learning Support/Resource/EAL) Teachers. Four Special Needs Assistants (3.41 Allocation) were assigned to the school by the Department of Education and Science to enable the inclusion and support of children with Special Educational Needs.

In the first post of a new guest blog series, the students of third class in Salesian Primary School, Limerick introduce their project Meadhbh of the Woods. Quotes taken from interviews with artist Fiona Linnane.

Meadhbh of the Woods was a collaboration between Third class of Salesian Primary School, Limerick, classroom teacher Lisa Bourke and three artists; composer Fiona Linnane, soprano Tríona Walsh and visual artist Claire Hurley. The project took place between January and June 2026 and was supported by the TAP and BLAST initiatives.

Meadhbh of the Woods

Meadhbh of the Woods is a song and a big project with our class. The song explains her life, her imagination. Meadhbh is green, her hair is really branchy and she has gold sparkles on her head. And she has a cloak. We didn’t expect to get 3 artists, Ms Bourke had it all planned and it was a surprise.

Artist doesn’t have to mean painting or sculpting. It can mean making sculptures, it can mean making music, it can mean composing music and if you have a few different artists it’s better because you can work with all of those different artists and maybe even develop new hobbies or just express yourself. Fiona helped us make the song, Tríona helped us sing the song … and Claire helped us make Meadhbh and all the characters.

I loved writing the story and practicing it. I liked how all of us got to help out in writing with the words … because it was collaborative. I really did feel heard and I felt like someone was reaching out for me.

Learning the song was pretty hard because … it was very long and some verses and choruses got a bit mixed up. Tríona helped us improve on that and the speaking parts during the middle 8. She was telling us the phrasing, how to pronounce the words.

We had loads of fun doing it but we had to stay focused. We learned how to work together and be collaborative and also to be patient.

I don’t think anyone in the class expected to get this much done because when we had our first artist in, Fiona, we only thought we would just get the song done and just have that song instead of performing and recording and doing all this professional stuff. None of us expected that.

Third class from Salesian Primary School with Meadhbh of the Woods. Photo credit Claire Hurley