Belfast songwriter’s latest installation celebrates Northern Ireland’s aviation industry
There are lots of ways to tell stories and I’ve always been fascinated by the format used by Belfast songwriter and installation artist, Fionnuala Fagan-Thiébot. Fionnuala is adept at telling other people’s stories, unearthing memories and experiences which she then shares creatively through her music and installation pieces.
Her latest project is Station Flight, which launched at the MAC in Belfast on September 29 and combines Fionnuala’s original songwriting and sound design with her installation art. The project retells the stories of former employees in the aviation industry and will be available to view until November 1, with live performances taking place on October 22 and 23. The name, Station Flight, by the way, is inspired by a hangar that one of these employees worked in at RAF Sydenham and which is now located at George Best Belfast City Airport.
Amongst the stories are reminiscences from those who used to work at Shorts Brothers plc, along with serving and retired members of the RAF, members of East Belfast Wise Men’s Shed and the Ulster Aviation Society. Station Flight subsequently pays tribute to these workers, sharing stories that otherwise would simply disappear; remembering also the test pilots who died, as well as celebrating the skills of those who are still with us.
As the MAC says, the project celebrates “design and artistry, talented mathematicians and engineers, creative geniuses who followed their dreams into the dawn of flight and enabled us, the passengers, to get up in the air and fly like the birds do.”
I chatted with Fionnuala about the project a little while ago, which bears some resemblance in its form to others she’s worked on in the past, more details of which can be found here.
“The MAC wanted to create a large-scale theatre piece telling the stories of the aviation industry in Northern Ireland,” she says. “I thought it sounded really interesting and very historically significant to Northern Ireland, so I applied to the ACES scheme for funding.”
Having secured her Arts Council grant, Fionnuala was then also supported by the MAC to develop the project, working on Station Flight on a part-time basis for six months.
“I started interviewing people,” she says. “The MAC had already engaged with some groups, like the Ulster Aviation Society, who were absolutely brilliant and really helpful. I also spoke to people from East Belfast Wise Men’s Shed. A lot of the men there were retired and in their 60s, and many of them worked in the shipyards and at Shorts.
“I also sourced a few people myself from Facebook. For example, the mum of a friend of mine worked in Shorts about 50 years ago. She had a degree in maths and was working as an engineer with 50 men. She was the only woman. I interviewed her because it’s important to have a female worker in there. Her story was really unique and out 
of the ordinary.”
Fionnuala also spoke to a man who delivered sky vans all over the world for Shorts, a small aircraft which had the appearance of a van with wings.
“They were quite cheap and could land in a short space without a big runway,” she says. “This man described going to Nepal to deliver a sky van to the King of Nepal. The pilot and the engineer then stayed with him.
“It’s just such an amazing story. He was also going into different war zones delivering planes – those sky vans were used at the time to lift injured people. There were three reasons why Shorts was successful, and the sky van was one of them. It was developed by Sir Philip Foreman, who was managing director of Shorts.”
Artistic
Interviewing ten people in total, Fionnuala has subsequently created five songs, along with a visual and a sound installation piece for Station Flight. The installation also features objects and images which have either been donated by the participants, or represent things they described. Meanwhile, the accompanying soundscape also evokes the aviation industry.
“There were lots of different sounds that came up in the interviews,” she says. “Lots of the interviewees spoke about birds. Basically, if we didn’t have birds, would we have thought to fly?”
Also featured in the project, in one of Fionnuala’s songs, is the story of Lilian Bland, who designed and built her own aircraft in Carnmoney between 1909 – 1911. A replica of her plane can now be found at Glengormley.
“She was the first woman in the world to do this,” says Fionnuala. “She was going to these flight shows and she trained herself as an engineer. Her first notion to fly came when she was watching birds fly off a cliff in Scotland. She was also sent a postcard of the first flight by her uncle, which inspired her.
“Aviation historian, Guy Warner, wrote a booklet about her. He said the aeronautical department at Queen’s University had her notebooks and that she really knew what she was doing. She was the first woman in the world to do this and she’s just not known about. She was actually a journalist and she wrote into this magazine about her work – I used the letters and the editor’s comments about her to write a song. I felt she was somebody really important to commemorate.”
Another of the songs focuses on the experience of flying – the good and the bad. Indeed, Fionnuala was keen to highlight the risks test pilots took and the fact that many of them actually died when testing aircraft.
“Two men who worked in RAF Sydenham both mentioned this story about a test pilot,” she says. “The plane crashed and the bodies were never found. In the 1950s lots of test pilots died – they were basically risking their lives. I thought this was a really important narrative to relate because it brings to public attention the reality of what the test pilots endured.
“When I embarked on this project I had very little knowledge of the aviation industry. It’s incredible to find out what you didn’t know.
“Steven Riley from the Ulster Aviation Society said these people were geniuses because they looked at the birds and thought, if the birds could do it, we could do it. And they followed their dreams. It’s because they followed their dreams that they’re geniuses.
“He spoke about his fascination of planes – the artistry of it all. He was born in 1945, when the war coloured everything. He spoke about engineers being meticulous and said their artistry was no less than that of the dancer or the singer.
“It really opens your eyes to the innovation and ingenuity of the people involved at the very beginning. I’ve completely changed my perspective of it all…”
Performances of Station Flight, which is funded by the MAC and the Arts Council NI, will take place at the Common Room at the MAC, Belfast on October 22 and 23, at 2pm and 4pm both days. More details here: https://themaclive.com/event/station-flight1/#dates-times