3rd November 2025
The Launch of the History of St. Agnes’ Community Centre for Music and the Arts in Crumlin CCMA.
“Music Changes Lives- A Creative Revolution in Crumlin.
A publication funded by UCD and considered a valuable resource for their students Outreach Programme written by Prof. Emeritus Ciaran Sugrue, records the history of the CCMA Centre from 2006-2025 and was inspired by Mother Mary Aikenhead’s vision “to give to all what the rich could buy for money”.
It was a most inspiring and enjoyable evening with so many of our Corporate Sponsors present and particularly so many of the Religious Sisters of Charity.
It was a launch with a difference enhanced greatly when the orchestra of over one hundred and thirty players from the CCMA, embracing an age range from 14-year-olds to 90-year-olds, played to the delight of all.
Professor Niamh Moore Cherry, Principal of the College and Head of Education at UCD, kindly agreed to launch the book and said it was her privilege to do so.
The Book in summary charts the journey of so many who never had a chance to engage with Music as a means of claiming their own power and improving their sense of self-confidence in a very competitive world where the innate value of the human being can be so diminished. The Centre caters for babies from 3 months old to adults as young as 90!!
In brief, the message we wish to convey through this project is that we are never too young or too old to join a community where people matter first and where the music is an addition that binds the Community.
What a trend setter was our own Foundress Mother Mary Aikenhead in empowering humanity and blazing the trail for us to follow having inspired so many in her aspiration “to give to all what the rich can buy for money.”
Dr Joanna Crooks, Founder, Violin Project and Late Starters Orchestra and Sr Bernadette Maria Sweeney RSC, Founder Director of CCMA can be justly proud of their project which has changed the lives of so many children and adults over the last almost twenty years. AMDG.
