Breifne Holohan | Bogland Hero

Bogland Hero

by Breifne on December 14, 2025 in Film/Visual

Upstate Theatre Project
in association with Grow Music & Boomerang Youth Café

Bogland Hero is a creative celebration of the Bog — its people, its stories, and its living landscape. A moving exploration of memory, place, and the urgent need to protect our natural landscapes.

Developed by Upstate Theatre Project through the lens of five passionate native voices from Ardee Bog, the film explores the unique topography of boglands, from plant life and wildlife to social and seasonal change over time. The work began with conversations with local residents who shared their memories, experiences, and deep-rooted connections to the bog. Their voices and insights became the inspiration for a series of workshops led by visual artist, Vivienne Byrne with young people at the Boomerang Youth Café.

From these exchanges grew a collaborative video artwork by Vivienne Byrne — a visual reflection on memory, place, and belonging. Composer, Breifne Holohan created an original score in response, to be performed live by Grow Music Ensemble (Grow Music / An Táin Arts Centre School of Music) and soloists.

Bringing together community storytelling, visual art, and live performance, Bogland Hero explores how the bog connects us — across generations and through time. It celebrates the cultural and ecological significance of Ireland’s boglands: landscapes that hold our history, nurture biodiversity, and remind us of the importance of preservation and care.

Soundtrack

Composer, musician and producer, Breifne Holohan created soundtrack for Bogland Hero. Commissioned to write a score suitable for live performance by young performers he reached out to students from Grow Music/An Táin Arts Centre School of Music. Currently a teacher and ensemble director at the school himself, it was fitting that the students come from within the ranks of the Grow Music band, ‘The Rolling Pebbles’. Supported by school director, Heather Oakes and facilitated by Gaelcoláiste Dhún Dealgan, the ensemble spent three intensive months of rehearsal preparing for the premiere performance of the film in December 2025.

Featuring strings, brass, woodwind, percussion, fretted instruments and electronics, Holohan’s score strives to evoke the unique landscape of boglands through changing times, both sociologically and seasonally. The soundtrack is rounded off by field recordings of Ardee bog and the sounds of ancient bronze age horns and trumpets, originally found in bogs all over Ireland, with contributions from the country’s foremost authorities on the instruments, Ancient Music Ireland. The score also pays tribute to a native renowned piper of Ardee, Pat McCormack, featuring traditional performance by uilleann piper, Ruadhán Collier O’ Brien and fiddler, Róisín Ward Morrow.