Standing By The Harbour Wall

Cliff Bailey, the Brady lad, Ashley Doré and Marlena Murphy

atest press release from Tiglin, issued on Friday, October 10th 2025…

A vibrant mural was unveiled at Greystones North Beach to mark the World Mental Health Day this evening.

Years of planning went into transforming a tired looking graffiti wall into a colourful community landmark.

The project coordinator Marlena Murphy’s vision was to bring the community to work together on a few important issues…

“What we tried to achieve is multi-dimensional,” explained Murphy. “It was to start a conversation about mental health and normalise the fact that adults and young people struggle. We acknowledged that we all as a community play a vital part in everybody’s well being.

“We wanted to highlight the importance of the voice of every member of our community including the voice of a child. Children and young people had an input in suggesting the messages of encouragement that will be written into the waves of the mural.

“The art work is purposely open to interpretation- to allow people to develop their own relationship with the art work. Everybody’s emotional response will be different, they will be drawn differently to various colours and stages of the mural.”

The project was a joint effort between Tiglin, Greystones Tidy Towns and Brady’s Shop, with support from Frank Crawford in the Sispar Group, along with artists Cliff Bailey, Ashley Doré, and Sarah McMahon.

This project was designed to allow the various community groups and local businesses to work collaboratively together for the good of the community.

The organisers wanted to simply bring more joy and colour, and to include people from different walks of life to be a part of the process.

Tiglin Aftercare Programme team played a vital role in the hands-on preparations.

According to Tiglin CEO Phil Thompson, “The theme of the mural is to highlight mental health struggles in our community. We hope that when someone sees this wall, they will know that even in difficult moments, things can and will change.

“It’s to let people know that even in the darkest times the storm will pass and the sun will raise again.”

“For Tiglin, the mural also reflected the role of participants in its Aftercare Programme, a community recovery initiative that follows residential rehabilitation,” said Owen, Aftercare’s head. “Participants who focus on building recovery capital and reconnecting with the community were delighted to prepare the wall for the beautiful artwork created by Cliff and Ashley.

“Darkness into light is such rapidly growing movement,” he continued, “which indicates that there is a huge need for these kind of supports. We wanted for our community to be able to have access to that kind of glimmer of hope every day that’s why we very carefully picked the location in a public space, it’s fully accessible to anybody at any time.

“It’s a popular place for locals to go and contemplate.”

The initiative had three simple goals:

⦿ To bring people together in a positive community project that supports well-being.
⦿ To raise awareness about mental health.
⦿ To add joy and colour to Greystones by refreshing the space.

Visible to those arriving into Greystones along the hiking trail, the mural is designed to spark conversations around mental health and highlight the power of community collaboration.

Explained Marlena, “We designed the mural in a way to be visible from the Cliff Walk as we wanted to send a message to the walkers, tourists, etc, coming into our town that Greystones is a fun, modern, inclusive community where we look out for each other…”

Nice. In amongst all the shiny, happy people at this evening’s launch, grumpy John McGowan was there with his trusty camera. Full gallery here.

Once again, John McGowan’s hi-res gallery of shots from the night are free to download right here.