Working with children keeps Babor— boss young at heart

The arts keep you young. That’s what Teenagh Cunningham says and she should know as she is the General Manager of Baboró, the international Arts Festival for children.

Teenagh is older than she looks, something she takes as a compliment and puts down to working with the arts and especially with children’s shows.

She is a bubbly Dubliner who came to work for the festival six years ago via the Kilkenny Arts Festival, though she cut her teeth with the Dun Laoghaire Arts Week and working with the Lambert Theatre Company.

And, of course, she has caught the Galway bug, the one which seduces people into staying in their adopted city – and loving every minute of it.

She loves her job, too, though of course, she hastily adds there’s always some aspect of every job that you don’t like. In her case, it’s the daily grind of paperwork.

Her office in the Baboró headquarters off Merchant’s Road in St Clare’s Walk looks like any other office, but a few soft toys here and there and old framed Baboró posters and brochures indicate what business she’s in.

“And this is a business. My job is to make sure the festival runs well and our ambition is not to have any money left at the end of the year, which admittedly is an unusual ambition for a business.

“What I do love about the job is making people happy and seeing the response to shows and talking to people about what they have seen and how they enjoyed it,” says Teenagh.

Teenagh was only 18 when she went to London for the summer and stayed for seven years.

“I loved living in London. I lived right in the heart, in Leicester Square, so I had the theatres and the cinemas and art galleries right at my doorstep.

“I didn’t work in the arts then. In fact, I wasn’t hugely interested in the arts then. I was a barmaid first and continued to work in hospitality until I came home.

“Then I got a job as a PA for a man who imported clothes. It was the first company to bring in the Puffa Jacket, you know the ones that were full of down, like ski jackets, and they were all the rage in the 80s.

“But then I found myself redundant when the business went bust and got a part-time job with the Dun Laoghaire Arts Week. I loved the idea of arts in the community and I was a good organiser. It was there that I met Miriam Lambert, daughter of Eugene, who had the puppet theatre and we became friends. In fact, I worked as her assistant for a while and that’s how I fell into children’s art really.”

She is fascinated that all of the ten Lambert children went into the arts and Miriam has brought her shows to Baboró over the years, including last year.

When Teenagh talks about Miriam’s show, or indeed any of the shows in this year’s Baboró programme, she is very animated. She tries to see most shows early in case she wants to go back and see them again.

Maybe one of the reasons she looks and acts so young is because she immerses herself in literature aimed at the younger reader (she has read all the Harry Potters and adores Philip Pullman) and she is particularly excited about UK writer Melvin Burgess who wrote Junk (for young adults) coming to the festival.

She loves shows aimed at children for their colour, their storytelling and their interaction.

It is not surprising then that her ring tone is of a laughing, gurgling child. “That’s my only child,” she laughs.

She has been involved in the first international puppet show in Dublin, the first international dance festival, both held in the 90s, all experience under her belt, though at the time she was so happy to be getting paid for doing something she loved. 

At a personal crossroads of her life, she decided to move to a small village in Kilkenny, Inis Tioge, where her parents had a fishing cottage and lo and behold, she ended up working with the Kilkenny Arts Festival.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.