Carrie (61) said she has a personal interest in the process of rejuvenating properties, and this was one of the factors that drew her to the show, Buildings Beo.
“Conservation and renovation would interest me and I sometimes despair at the number of buildings around the country that could, with the right bit of care and love be brought back to life and could serve as a home for somebody,” she told the Sunday Independent.
After three years of travelling the country to put the show together she believes more should be done by Government to help people rescue properties that could be lost forever.
There are currently over 166,000 vacant buildings in Ireland
“I think rural regeneration schemes could be made more user friendly and where there are grants for renovating vacant properties there has to be a way where the purchasers can get the grant before doing the work rather than having to get bank loans and then only getting the grant money after the work has been done,” she said.
There are currently over 166,000 vacant buildings in Ireland and the new six-part series will visit restoration projects ranging from historical mills to old schoolhouses.
Her acting credits include The Clinic, School Run, An Crisis, Fair City and most recently The Walsh Sisters, based on Marian Keyes’s bestselling novels Rachel’s Holiday and Anybody Out There? Her career got a boost when she played a lead in the Irish language film An Cailín Ciúin, which received an Oscar nomination for Best International Film.
Catherine Clinch and Carrie Crowley in ‘An Cailín Ciúin’
“An Cailín Ciúin was an amazing experience,” she said. “From the first time I read the script, it moved me hugely and the filming of it was a really special time for us all. It felt like it could be very beautiful, but until you see something in its finished state you can never be sure. As soon as we had a cast and crew screening, which was the first time we all saw it together, we knew it was a gem of a film.
“It would be easy to say that Irish audiences recognised something of an older Ireland in it, but it actually had a very similar impact on people all over the world, so in some ways it might just have been the simplicity of the storytelling that worked,” she added.
Does presenting the new series on TG4 mean we’ll see her more often in our homes?
“I hadn’t presented anything for a long time until Buildings Beo as I didn’t want there to be any confusion with regard to what I do. By now, I think it’s OK to do an occasional presenting job and to me, it’s easier to do it in Irish. Again, it lessens any confusion, and the projects I’ve worked on are more about exploring the world we live in here rather than saying ‘hello and welcome’ blah blah.”
She said when the producer of Buildings Beo phoned to ask if she’d meet for a chat, she “had nothing major on the cards so felt it might be an interesting project.”
We ended up spending three years on it
“From the beginning we knew it would take a while as we’d be seeing things through from their wrecked state to a final reveal after all the work had been done. We ended up spending three years on it, but it was hugely enjoyable and obviously it wasn’t a full-time job for me at any stage. Just visits every few months to catch up on the progress. We got to know so many of the people connected to the different projects and it was fascinating to see each project through to the end.”
This weekend she was travelling to Belfast as one of her recent films, another Irish language production, Aontas, is being screened. She plays the lead in the film, about three women who rob a rural credit union.
Among the restorations featured in the series are the transformation of the historic Hope Castle Gate Lodge into a community library in Castleblayney, Co Monaghan; the revival of a railway building into a digital hub and youth centre in Ballinamore, Co Leitrim; and the redevelopment of a fire-ravaged cinema into a state-of-the-art local theatre in Cork’s market town of Macroom.
‘Buildings Beo’ starts on TG4, on Wednesday, November 19, at 8.30pm