Beyond his artistic practice, Nichol is actively involved in community arts. As part of Birr Young Voices, he worked with young people aged 8-13 earlier this year on ‘Myths and Magic’, a mythology and storytelling project supported by Creative Ireland, linking music, art and animation inspired by folklore and legends. Previously, Finn also created the performance ‘Soundscapes of Nature’, commissioned by Birr Festival of Music and supported by Creative Ireland.‘Soundscapes of Nature’ was inspired by flora, fauna, blogland myths and the natural world. We spoke to Finn about his creative process, working on both of his Creative Ireland funded projects and the powerful themes prevalent in his work.

Your artistic practice blends visual storytelling with rich, textured soundscapes. Can you talk us through your creative process when merging these disciplines? How do you approach the challenge of balancing the visual and musical components to create a unified emotional experience?

It varies from project to project. Sometimes the visuals come first and inspire the sound, but there have also been times where I’ve created a character and realised they were a perfect fit for a soundscape or song I made years earlier.

I often experience a kind of obligation avoidance in my practice – working on songs when I have a visual commission due, and vice versa, with many of my favourite works beginning as acts of procrastination. Lately, I’ve become increasingly interested in how the mechanics of a medium shape narrative—how ideas are bent or transformed to suit their form. In my recent show at Catalyst Arts, for example, I explored this through a recurring character who appeared across a drawing installation, a video/sound piece, and a live performance. Each iteration of the character was distinct, shaped by the limitations and possibilities of each medium. The emotional relationships between the works was complicated as the characters apparent joy in the drawings was undercut by the frenzied anxiety of the soundtrack in the video piece.

‘Soundscapes of Nature’, your collaboration with Creative Ireland and Birr Young Voices, drew on bogland myths and local biodiversity. What inspired you to root that project so deeply in the Offaly landscape, and how did working with young performers shape the direction or tone of the piece?

Irish folklore is a largely oral tradition and, with the loss of that, has become somewhat homogenised. We all learn the stories of Tir na Nog and of Finn McCool but I wanted to tell tales they hadn’t heard- ones relating specifically to the midlands. I wanted them to have a sense of ownership in the stories and to the places in which they occur.

Each workshop started with a storytelling session where we talked about things like the mythic importance of Hawthorne trees, the founding story of the Shannon and the beasts who inhabit it. A sense of place, of locality, is increasingly important from an environmental standpoint. Being able to situate oneself in the historical and mythological context of a landscape confers a degree of ownership- a sense of being its’ guardian. Irish folklore is animistic, treating plants and wildlife with great respect. Children intuitively understand this and their depictions of nature are filled with warmth and gentle wonder.

Your work often explores themes like isolation, helplessness, and the emotional weight of living through environmental and societal crises. How important do you think art is as a form expressing and processing complex emotions like anxiety?

One theory of dreaming is that our brain is rehearsing potential scenarios for the benefit of our waking self. By the same token, art can provide a safe and socially acceptable context to engage with dark or difficult ideas. Stories, particularly folk-tales, can introduce children to heavy concepts, rehearsing the emotional experience of death or violence  before their inevitable real life encounters..

Both in its creation and consumption, art can provide a framework and set of images or ideas for understanding ourselves and our environments. It also provides a socially acceptable context for expressing difficult, sometimes traumatic emotions.

Much of your work is rooted in local landscapes, myths, and ecological themes. As an artist working in Ireland today, how do you see the relationship between place, identity, and creativity evolving – especially in a time of rapid cultural and environmental change?

Ireland is certainly no stranger to rapid change. The troubles, the decline of political catholicism, the celtic tiger and crash all happened in living memory, resulting in an Irish identity which is constantly in flux. The search for a sense of continuity regarding the question of national identity has partly driven a revival in older elements of Irishness: folklore, music and language.

During the Celtic Tiger, there was a prevailing belief that we had to shed the past to embrace modernity and claim our place among Europe’s modern nations. But the promises of that era—home ownership, financial security, prosperity—proved empty. Instead, people now seek a sense of self in the past. We see this in the resurgence of pagan and folk traditions, in musical acts like Húartan and Lankum, and in the reappearance of Sheela na Gigs and Brigid’s crosses on scarves, pins, and gallery walls. The Irish language, too, is enjoying a cultural resurgence, gaining visibility through artists like the Belfast rap group Kneecap and Colm Bairéad’s An Cailín Ciúin, the first Irish-language film to receive an Oscar nomination.

Irish Art, particularly among young people, has become more explicitly political. The ongoing crisis in Palestine made us grapple with our own history as a partitioned, colonised people. This has been an awakening for many regarding unjust, global power structures. This spirit of solidarity holds promise for future action—particularly around the climate crisis—even if we still have a long road ahead.

Explore the Creative Communities list of current events in County Offaly here.

Follow the Birr Festival of Music here. 

Follow Finn Nichol here.