After 40 years at the Waterford Youth Arts helm, Ollie Breslin hangs up his hat

Ollie’s got a laconic way of speaking. Laid back…reflective…observant. He’s got the mystical look about him that savants have of seeing the future in the present. He’s uncannily honest as he looks back on a fascinating life that found stability in instability and certainty in uncertainty.

His life’s journey has brought him to this comfortable understanding of his own self. A philosophy of the self founded on his own personal existential path along many highways.

His parents moved here from Bellaghy in County Derry where they both met, his mum Maggie Glass was a local from near Claudy and was now working as the housekeeper for the local priest. His dad Neil was originally from County Donegal and moved to Bellaghy when he was 12 to work as a general worker for his uncle who owned the shop, the pub and a general farm supply store - for the catholic community! Now in Waterford after they married his father worked in Clover Meats and bought a pub in Patrick’s Street. Breslin’s – a corner premises just above where Spokes is now – that the family ran in tandem with his dad’s job in the Clover.

The five kids worked in the pub along with their mother.

“My father came home from the Clover and went straight into the pub…that’s what he did…everyday of his life. Got up…went to work in the Clover…came home to work in the bar…went to bed…and did it all again the next day.” Ollie learned a lot about life in that bar. There wasn’t too much money about and the customers made their own entertainment. Sing songs on Saturday nights and everyone had their own party piece, cards, chats. Ollie did runners for customers to the bookies. Carrigeen Lane and in the graveyard of the protestant St. Patrick's Church was his playground and he also served as an altar boy in the Catholic St. Patrick's Church down the road.

He was recruited to sell programmes, raffle tickets and ice-creams in the Theatre Royal foyer during the festival where he developed his lifelong hatred for musicals.

“Waterford Youth Arts never does musicals,” says a smiling Ollie.

Ollie was a drifter in school. Loved art but was thrown out of art for flicking a drop of paint. He got by on his memory but had no real interest. He went travelling at a time when hitch-hiking was the thing.

He started off in France and hitched his way around Europe and then “hopped over to North Africa”. As you do!

It’s a jaw-dropping trek which sees him get more adventurous on each journey, that sees him moving across Eygpt, Israel and finally ending up spending a month in a small village called Wau in Sudan. It was a time when Sudan was safe.

Very few white people have ever seen Wau but he felt totally safe.

“For the first time in my life, I never stuck out as the tall skinny kid with glasses because the Dinka people were all tall, some of them even went on to become professional basketball players in the US.” 

Ollie spent four years away travelling and tried to help set up an alternative to Kibbutz's in Jordan, in support of the Palestinian people - at that time lots of young people from all over the world travelled to Israel and worked as volunteers in Kibbutz's. Ollie, with a couple of young English women, worked with some Palestinians in Jordan to help establish an alterative - but unfortunately it didn't work out.

"The political situation had become volatile and the secret police were everywhere.” 

Back in Waterford at the age of 22, he looked around for something to do. Exciting times lay ahead with theatre in education, headed up by the late Teddy O’Regan. Myles Shelley had been working on forming co-ops to help young people in the arts. Teddy’s ‘Arts for All’ project, together with Clodagh Walsh and Aine O'Brien, helped recruit eight young people all aged under 25 years (including Ollie), to form Ciotóg and they toured the country with mini-dramas to initiate discussions in schools around young people’s mental health.

Ollie subsequently produced a community newspaper, The Bull Post, and began working with youths in trouble in the Manor St John project. Waterford Youth Drama – later to be Waterford Youth Arts – was founded with Jim Daly, Jim O’Meara, Kieran Stewart and others promoting creative writing, film, dance and art. With funding from Waterford Corporation, WYA became a structured business with Teddy and Ollie at the helm. Local business people helped to establish funding and an artistic space for young people landed.

There was never a grand plan but a movement that “just grew organically”. Securing a premises was always a chore until they found their current home in the old barracks opposite Mount Sion.

“These young people could run the country,” beams Ollie, and goes on to explain the philosophy behind WYA. There’s an open-door policy with young people on the members’ committee who all have a big say in the running of the venture. Ideas are bounced and explored and professional artists are hired and backed up by adult volunteers, and together with the young people they explore film, theatre, visual art, creative writing and music projects.

Membership lasts until the age of 19 and all involved emerge with a sense of their own creativity and self-worth because “the arts is always a welcoming place for people that don’t always fit it”.

There are opportunities for everyone, and never any pressure to succeed. Beckett’s mantra of ‘ever tried, ever failed, no matter; try again, fail again, fail better’ was never more apt.

Big names in Waterford’s amateur and professional arts are here ...Sile Penkert, Deirdre Dwyer, the Kavanaghs, the Jordans, the Meaghers etc. etc...the list is endless, really WYA have played a significant role in the nurturing and development of the arts scene in Waterford over the last 40 years.

Creativity is a river here. Plays in parks and fields. 

“We even had a play on a travelling bus!” laughs Ollie. 

A tangent to the youth work has been their recording of Waterford's social history stories - talking to older people and gathering their stories of the huge change in society that they have seen - starting with a film about Barrack Street, then it moved on to Ballybricken, Down the Town, St. John's Park, Dungarvan, Tramore, Slieverue, The Cultural Quarter and they even told the Glass factory story by the workers who worked there.

No regrets for Ollie. 

“It’s been an interesting life and it’s time to wave goodbye to WYA that has been my life really. There were struggles along the way and the financial insecurity was always in the background but my family were very supportive. I couldn’t have done it without them.”