A town has a heartbeat, just like a person. We forget that. Towns, like bodies, can grow tired, scared, or quiet. They can grieve. They can lose their pulse if not tended to.

In Ireland, many towns once thriving now move more slowly. Shops have closed, meeting places stand empty, and there is a sense of absence, a hollowing out. And yet, if you listen carefully beneath the silence, the heart still beats quietly. It beats in the voices of the older people who have lived here, raised families here, worked, loved, remembered, and created here. 

Over the past year, as part of the Leitrim Arts Creative Communities funded project I have sat with a group of women from Mohill, listening to their stories and recording their memories. Together, we have stitched garments, not costumes or things to wear but relics. Each piece holds a moment of importance: a fragment of youth, of work, of love, of survival. These garments are organs of memory, as vital as lungs or veins, keeping alive the rich tapestry of these women’s lives.

In the film that emerges from this work, you will hear a heartbeat beneath their words. That sound is deliberate. It is the reminder that these women are not in the background of history — they are the very pulse of the town itself.

A Town as a Living Body

Like the Shannon that flows all around us, a town is more than bricks and streets. It has a heart that needs to beat. We should listen. 

In 2021, the Magpie River (Muteshekau Shipu) in Quebec, Canada, was granted legal personhood, recognised as a living being with rights: the right to flow, to evolve, to be free from pollution. For the Innu people, this was not a new idea; it reflected what they had always believed and known. The river is their kin. It is family. It holds spirit. To care for it is not ownership but responsibility, a duty of protection, as you would protect your blood or thing you love. 

If a river can be seen as living, then can a town? A place of gathering. A town breathes through its people, and without its heart or without connection it falters. These women are the backbone of their town. Some were born here and some came here early, late or recently. And yet, they are ALL the quiet heartbeat, the steady pulse, the living memory. Their stories are not only personal; they are vital currents that elevate the town itself, restoring breath to its lungs and life to its streets. They are full of rich variety and life. 

The Work of Grief

But we cannot speak of life without also speaking of grief. Towns, like people, carry loss. Those we loved who have gone — are they not still here? Imprinted in the walls, the fields, the air we breathe? Ancient traditions knew this. In Ireland, rivers were once honoured as goddesses, wells as sacred sites of healing, the land itself as a woman whose body we were entrusted to tend. To harm her was to harm ourselves.

So, dear friends- This project is an instruction, a call to witness: to listen to elders. To bring together the ones who remember and the ones just beginning and all between. A reminder. Between them, a town listens to its breath, filling its lungs and heart. 

And so I return to the sound at the heart of this film: a steady beat. A reminder that Mohill is alive. Listen. The elders are beating time. The rest of us listen. That is how a town continues to be a living, breathing thing.