Home is where the art is

Supporters who attended Sunday’s Sports Direct Premiership opener with Portadown may have noticed a vibrant addition to Solitude’s decor.

Thanks to the expertise of Belfast-based Italian artist Daniela Balmaverde, the McAlery Stand now sports a beautiful new mural celebrating the natural landscape that surrounds our home and which illustrates the connection between Club, community and the environment.

In the foreground, a female – specifically chosen to represent our hugely successful Ladies team and ever-growing Girls Academy – releases a house martin blending movements of the sport with the birds’ flight pattern, while the background features the lush colourings of the Waterworks and Cave Hill, merged with the famous Red of Ireland’s Oldest Football Club.

Our stadium’s latest facet is about more than just artwork, however.

For featured within the functional mural are eight house martin boxes that mimic the endangered birds’ natural mud nests, providing a welcome home for a much-loved member of the Waterworks’ ecological family, for whom finding safe spaces to breed has been an ongoing concern during a population decline dating back to 1995.

Raising awareness on how small interventions on a neighbourhood level can make a big difference in supporting the house martin, Cliftonville Football Club are only too pleased to have joined forces with Wild Belfast for this collaborative living mural project, and we join them in extending thanks to Perla Mansour, Conor McKinney, Paul Toner, Noel McKernan and, of course, the incredibly talented Daniela for their assistance and involvement throughout the process.

We look forward to seeing further living murals springing up across the city in the weeks and months ahead, and trust that visitors not only to Solitude but to the Waterworks itself continue to enjoy the newest addition to the local landscape.