Karina enters stage left

New arts officer pays tribute to her predecessor

There’s a feeling there even before Karina Charles starts to speak - a sense rooted in years spent scurrying over theatre scripts, cobbling together art from scraps of time, limited budgets, and an unwavering belief in the process. Whatever it is, there’s no doubt: she’s been to the trenches.

So it stands to reason - in the kind of way that fate often masquerades as coincidence - that Karina has become Cavan Arts Officer.

She takes over from the hugely-respected Catriona O’Reilly, who held the post for nearly 25 years. It’s the most significant changing of the guard since the role was imagined.

“It’s sort of like stepping into your mammy’s shoes,” Karina laughs, speaking with the Celt in the green room behind the Cavan Townhall stage.

Catriona served until her retirement with dignity, wit and a gentle but undeniable fire.

Her legacy isn’t just in the projects she brought to life or the budgets she squeezed every drip of paint from - it’s in how she encouraged artists to be creatively bolder, louder, more themselves.

“Catriona had your back,” says Karina. But more than that, she made it feel like art belonged here. It’s this mantle Karina hopes to carry on.

“She’s the reason so many of us felt confident enough to do what we were doing - whether that was performing or producing. That’s where the fear comes in now, knowing how important that role was, and now it’s mine.”

Karina pauses. “She probably doesn’t know the impact she had. You don’t always know that when you’re in the middle of it. But there was consistency, and a kind of quiet firmness - and sometimes that’s exactly what artists needed.”

So no pressure.

Karina brings a rare dual perspective: Someone who knows the hunger of the artist, and the burden of balancing budgets. She’s aware too of the fragility of trying to balance passion with practicality. All too often, full-time artists are forced to downgrade their dreams to part-time pursuits.

“I’ve been on the other side,” says the Gregrahan native.

From singing on 2FM at 15 to walking the boards with the Corn Mill Theatre, The Abbey, and Crescendo Theatre Company, Karina has been a force in Cavan’s creative scene for decades. A History graduate from Trinity, for a time her career veered towards reading the news and daily deaths on Northern Sound. Most recently, she co-ordinated the climate action project Restoring Cavan’s Boglands, becoming an accidental expert in Sphagnum moss in the process.

“Most artists can’t survive on their art alone,” she laments, noting that she doesn’t know a single person who was accepted onto the Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) pilot scheme. That initiative, which provided €325 a week to selected artists, ends in 2025. The National Campaign for the Arts (NCFA) is pushing for it to become a permanent fixture.

“You’ve artists taking on teaching jobs, side gigs, reimagining themselves, over and over, just to survive.”

This is where Karina becomes the advocate.

She wants local creatives to think strategically - to use small grants to reach for larger ones, nationally and across Europe. She plans to bring in experts to help demystify the process of funding applications. She’ll be learning too, she adds. “There’s unbelievable talent in Cavan,” says Karina, not in that overused press release kind of way, but with actual conviction in her voice. Chipping away at the well-worn sculpting metaphor, she sees all ideas starting off as a proverbial block of blank stone. Somewhere within that hewn surface an idea emerges. Form appears and embellishments are added. As Karina sees it, the job of the arts office is to clear the dust, break down the barriers, and eventually help the end product to breathe.

It may be a painting class, a two-day Easter workshop, or even a makeshift local stage with dodgy lighting and a crowd of 30, mainly relatives. But this is where starting lines get drawn.

Names are rattled off like those of proud siblings: Finn Keenan now directing stars like Danny DeVito and more recently rap act-du-jour Kneecap; Kevin McGahern making the nation laugh; Philip Doherty’s theatrical dreamscapes; and the Turner prize Laura O’Connor but to name a few. All started small.

“You never know when it’s going to happen,” says Karina of the chances that are created. “You never know where that spark is going to come from.”

And that’s the thing about Karina: she’s not chasing prestige - she’s chasing ignition.

Accessibility

She speaks passionately - and pointedly - about accessibility in the arts too. And she means it. She wants to one day see art in shop windows, cafés, housing estates, even right in the street. Karina’s serious about reaching people who might never walk into a gallery or theatre.

She recalls touring with Seamus O’Rourke for a Moth production under a GAA social initiative: “We were in community centres all across Ireland. People would come up after and say, ‘I’ve never seen a show before, but I’d go again’.”

Culture night

That approach shapes her first Culture Night as Arts Officer (Friday, September 19). A gloriously anarchic celebration will spill into Cavan’s streets - guerrilla poets in coffee shops, flamenco dancers on the pavement beside Indian-Irish fusion acts, circus performers tumbling past shoppers, and even a dancing Child of Prague- because why not? The full lineup for Culture Night is now live, and Karina is proud of how the celebration stretches into towns and villages countywide.

“It’s going to be mayhem,” she grins. “But the good kind. The kind where someone’s walking home from the shops with milk and bread might not even know it’s on and and they’ll look around and think, ‘What the hell is going on here?’”

Still, it’s not just about spectacle - though Karina dreams big. She’d love to see a rock opera staged in Cavan someday. “I love large productions,” she beams, recalling ‘Prometheus Rising’ to mark the Townhall’s transition from municipal building to arts space.

“That kind of thing draws people in - it doesn’t immediately scream ‘art’, but it absolutely is.” It’s clear Karina understands the weight of the role but, more importantly, the potential it holds.

Community

Ultimately, her vision is rooted in community. “An arts office is only as good as the people in it and the projects that come our way.”

Thankfully, she feels blessed with both.

When asked about the legacy she hopes to leave, quite literally she muses on the idea of a paint-covered thumb pressed canvas - a communal collage of a broad-branched tree with imprints of every artist, child, volunteer, and passer-by.

That’s her metaphorical vision: Inclusive, collaborative, ever-growing.

“If you’re willing to volunteer an hour, make tea, or wear a high-vis at the door, next thing you’re part of it. You’re in. There’s a family here. And over the years, I’ve seen people who felt lost or lonely come in and find something - a place, a passion, a community.”