A unique commission from Limerick’s Live95FM and RTÉ Lyric FM has won a Gold Medal at the New York Radio Festival Awards 2015 for its ground‐breaking sound portrait of Limerick. The series entitled As It Lives & Breathes came about as a result of a unique commission from the two broadcasters as a way to mark Limerick City of Culture 2014. It features 100s of Limerick voices, sounds and stories, all recorded on
location around the city and county. It was written and produced by Diarmuid McIntyre, Mairead O’Connor & Mary McDonnell of Grey Heron Media, with funding from the Sound and Vision Broadcasting Funding Scheme administered by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.
As It Lives & Breathes takes the listener on an aural adventure. Over 12 richly textured episodes, As It Lives is a meditative and playful sonic portrait of Limerick, the place and its people, featuring only sounds, voices and music recorded by the multi‐award‐winning Grey Heron Media team on location in Limerick city and county.
Aodán Ó Dubhghaill, Head of RTÉ Lyric FM, & Joe Nash, Chief Executive of Limerick’s Live 95FM, wanted to mark Limerick’s year as National City of Culture in 2014. They came together for the first time in a unique collaboration and commissioned multi‐award‐winning Grey Heron Media to produce a pair of series to celebrate life in Limerick in 2014, the result was As It Lives & Breathes and, the well‐received, Cultural
Passions, which features 36 Limerick culture makers in conversation.
Aodán Ó Dubhghaill, Head of RTÉ Lyric FM, commenting on the international success of this Irish series, said that the As It Lives & Breathes initiative was “an innovative broadcasting partnership with a local, national and international resonance, sharing stories from in and around Limerick as it lived and breathed during City of Culture 2014 – disseminated around the globe through the medium of the ‘wireless’.”
Joe Nash, Chief Executive of Limerick’s Live 95FM, paid tribute to the special Limerick flavour of this series. He said, “We are delighted that this series, specifically commissioned by Limerick’s Live 95FM and RTÉ Lyric FM for City of Culture 2014 has received such prestigious international recognition. Diarmuid and the team at Grey Heron Media work closely with us on a regular basis and, in this series, they really captured the excitement, drama and humour of a wonderful year in Limerick. The BAI also deserve great credit for backing the venture, through the ‘Sound and Vision’ fund.”
Diarmuid McIntyre, the Creative Director of Grey Heron Media, who travelled to New York to receive the award, said, “The collaborative team at Grey Heron Media are very proud of this series. The approach we took to its production, setting ourselves the challenge of capturing the character of Limerick in 2014 through only sounds, voices and music we recorded in Limerick, really fired us up creatively.”
Speaking about the unique nature of the collaboration, Joe Nash said, “I also want to thank Aodán and the team at RTÉ Lyric FM for their willingness to pursue this co‐broadcast, on an independent and state broadcaster, which is the first time it has been done for a documentary series.”
Diarmuid McIntyre also commented, “The joint‐broadcast of such an artistically bold series by the two broadcast partners was a vindication of the creative terms on which the Grey Heron team approached this important project, marking Limerick’s special year in 2014.”
Both broadcasters paid tribute to their teams who supported the production, including Gillian Devlin and the team at Live 95FM and Eoin O’Kelly and Olga Buckley at the Lyric Feature, and both stations’ commitment to their audiences. As Joe Nash says, “I want to acknowledge Live 95FM’s team at the station for their commitment to this kind of quality documentary programming, which is relevant and engaging for our Limerick audience.”
The series was broadcast on the Limerick Today programme on Live 95FM and during Lorcan Murray’s Weekend Drive, between October 2014 and February 2015.
You can listen to As It Live & Breathes at www.GreyHeron.ie
