HeARTlands Founders Story
HeARTlands Founders Story
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There is a place at the centre of Ireland where rivers meet, stories linger and creativity quietly waits to be rediscovered. For us, that place is Longford. Like many people, we did not travel a straight road to becoming artists. Life required us to work, to travel, to build careers, to meet responsibilities and, at times, to place our creativity gently to one side. Our paths have not always been easy. Yet creativity has a remarkable way of waiting for us. It waits in childhood memories. In the landscapes that first taught us wonder. In stories remembered from our grandparents. In books read beneath trees. In pencil sketchings on paper bags. In dried paint on a brush.
Eventually, if we are willing, it calls us home.
We are Anna M. Delaney and Phil Atkinson, and although we followed different paths before meeting in County Longford, creativity has been a constant thread running through both our lives.
Our journeys took us across Ireland and beyond—to Britain, Europe and America—before leading us back to Longford, in the heartlands of Ireland. Here we rediscovered not only art, but the extraordinary power of creativity to heal, to connect and to transform. We also found each other.
We have witnessed how painting, poetry, storytelling and shared creative experiences can restore confidence, strengthen communities and remind people that they belong.
HeARTlands was born from that belief. Not simply to exhibit artwork, but to create opportunities, to encourage emerging artists, to celebrate established ones, to foster conversations across cultures, to welcome artists from abroad while sharing the creativity of Ireland with the wider world.
Most of all, HeARTlands exists because we believe no one should ever be told that they are ‘not artistic’ or ‘not creative enough’. We are creative beings by nature. Creativity belongs to everyone.
Anna M. Delaney
Anna M. Delaney
For me, creativity began at home in Longford.
My earliest memories of creativity are woven through the ordinary moments of family life: watching my grandfather draw soldiers on brown paper bags, listening to my father sing songs to me at night, experiencing the care and creativity expressed through my grandmothers' cooking, and watching my mother knit and sew our clothes, tend to our home and nurture her garden.
Art wasn't something I first encountered in a gallery. It was something I experienced in everyday life.
It was in drawing and song, in food lovingly prepared, in gardens tended and things made by hand. And running through all of it was a shared love and appreciation of nature and animals.
Growing up in rural County Longford, My childhood was filled with reading, drawing, daydreaming, climbing trees and exploring fields and hedgerows. I loved art, writing, nature and the landscape around me. Creativity gave me freedom, possibility, escape and a way of making sense of the world.
A creative career did not however seem like an obvious or accessible path at the time, and life drew me instead into a career in hospitality, tourism and community development. I travelled, lived and worked in Ireland, the UK, Europe and the United States before eventually finding my way home to Longford and returning to education as a mature student.
While studying toward an MA in Women, Gender and Social Justice at UCD, I was reconnected with art in an entirely new way. Through feminist art and women's creative practice, I began to understand creativity not simply as expression, but as a potential mechanism for reflection, wellbeing, empowerment and transformative change.
It reignited the spark that had always been there and I have been writing and creating artwork since then. In 2020 I trained as a life coach and mentor with a specialisation in mental health and wellbeing. I now combine coaching, mentoring and creativity for wellbeing via my coaching practice.
My professional journey brings together many of the skills that help us shape HeARTlands: hospitality, tourism, community development, events management, cultural programming and international exchange, along side art and creativity as a mechanism for personal change and transformation.
Phil Atkinson
Phil Atkinson
My creative journey began in Dublin.
As a child, I was inspired by my grandfather's pencil drawings and would sit copying them. The formal school structure wasn't for me so I attended the Liberties VEC where I completed an alternative version of the Leaving Certificate which focused more on practical skills rather than academic.
Encouraged by my art teacher, I flourished, developing skills in paint and colour. I knew then a creative life was the one for me but life drew me in a different direction, and I found myself working alongside my father in the construction industry.
But creativity continued to call. I dabbled with trying my hand as a tattoo artist for a while until I discovered the medium that truly captured my imagination: airbrushing.
I spent several years learning and mastering the intricacies of the airbrush before returning to college as a mature student, undertaking formal study in Art & Design in Longford and subsequently developing my professional creative practice.
Today my work moves across fine art, portraiture, large-scale murals and specialist custom painting. My airbrush artwork has appeared on trucks, motorcycles, trikes, helmets and other vehicles, winning several awards along the way, while commissioned artworks have found homes with people around the world. I'm especially proud of my custom airbrushing for Emerald Guitars in Donegal, each one a unique piece of art.
An equally important part of my creative life, however, has always been sharing what I know. I believe in the ethos of sharing and helping others along the way.
For many years I have worked as a community artist with schools, youth groups, festivals and community organisations throughout Longford and across Ireland, introducing others to airbrushing, street art, mural art, and other forms of creativity.
Having travelled my own unconventional road back to art, I understand something of what it means to carry creativity within you while waiting for the confidence, opportunity or circumstances to pursue it.
When our Creative Paths met
When our Creative Paths met
We met through Cruthú Arts Festival in Longford.
Anna had been involved in establishing the festival as a member of its founding committee. Phil first became involved as an exhibiting artist and subsequently joined the committee.
We connected through our love of art, animals, nature and a shared curiosity about people, places and the stories held within them. Creativity became part of the language of our relationship.
We encouraged one another, shared ideas and collaborated creatively on our Legends and Love Stories workshops and murals, as well as on The Heart of the Matter, a visual art and storytelling project which launched at Backstage Theatre in 2017.
Longford became the place where our personal and creative journeys intertwined and we discovered how well our very different backgrounds complemented one another.
Between us, we bring experience in art and writing, hospitality and tourism, community development, coaching and mentoring, cultural programming, international networking, exhibitions, commissioned art and community arts practice.
But we also bring something less easily written on a CV:
Lived experience.
We know what it means for life not to follow a straight line.
We know what it is to find your way back to creativity after ill health or simply travelling other paths.
We know what it feels like to stand on the outside; to be excluded.
And we know it is possible to move forward and prosper despite all the challenges.
From Our Hearts to the World
From Our Hearts to the World
Today, HeARTlands brings together many of the threads that have shaped our own lives — art, writing, storytelling, landscape, nature, community, hospitality, mentoring, travel, friendship and cultural exchange.
We are deeply rooted here in County Longford and in the Heartlands of Ireland.
But we are also looking outward.
Through HeARTlands, we are returning to an international vision that began years before HeARTlands had a name: bringing Irish creativity and stories into conversation with other people, places and cultures, while welcoming their creativity and stories into our own.
In 2017, while working as Longford Tourism Officer, Anna led a European project during which she travelled to Teruel in Spain, representing Ireland, and more specifically Longford. The focus of the trip was an international conference exploring ways of connecting towns and cities across Europe through their distinctive art, stories, legends and love stories.
At the time, there was relatively little interest locally in developing the idea further, and the project did not continue in Longford following my resignation as County Tourism Officer in April 2017.
But the idea never left her. Neither did the friendships and connections she made.
In the years since, there has been a renewed appreciation of our legends, folklore, cultural heritage and the stories that connect people to place. What felt like an unusual idea then feels remarkably relevant now.
And so, a decade after that first journey, Anna will return to Teruel in 2027 — this time with HeARTlands and the work of a community of artists and creatives from Ireland, for our first international exhibition.
Together, we will bring our art and our stories, showcasing work inspired by Landscapes, Legends and Love Stories and creating opportunities for friendship, cultural exchange and creative collaboration between our communities.
An idea first carried from Longford to Teruel in 2017 will make the journey again in 2027 — no longer carried by one person, but by a community of artists and creatives.
What began as a solo trip, and waited, as an unfinished European conversation, is becoming the beginning of HeARTlands' international story.
We believe local stories belong in global conversations.
HeARTlands grew from our story.
But our hope is that it will never be only about us.
It is about all the artists, writers, creatives, communities and friends who pull up a chair, bring something of themselves to the table and become part of the story too, whether that's locally or globally.
Because ultimately, HeARTlands is something we are creating together.
Rooted in Ireland. Open to the world. Led by heart.
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