Wexford first as Ciara lands
A TALENTED student from County Wexford School of Music has become the first person from Wexford to receive a prestigious Quercus Creative and Performing Arts Scholarship to University College Cork.
Ciara Cullinane, who lives in Slaney Woods, Park, recently completed her Leaving Certificate in Loreto Secondary School and is looking forward to studying Medicine in UCC.
Quercus Creative and Performing Arts Scholarships are designed to allow students pursue an academic course while also developing their creative interest and artistic talents – they only take on three or four each year, so it is very competitive.
Students have to demonstrate an exceptional level of excellence in their chosen art form – in Ciara’s case singing.
Her music teacher Aileen Donohoe said that during her time at County Wexford School of Music, Ciara has been an exceptional student, excelling in all her singing exams to Grade 8 and winning many solo singing competitions, including Arklow and Kilcoole Music Festivals and The Aims Choral Festival.
She is also a member of the highly-successful group 7th Fret who were champions of this year’s Wexford Has Talent and a performs with Wexford Light Opera Society.
Staff and students of County Wexford School of Music and in particular her teacher, Aileen, said they wanted to extend their warmest congratulations to Ciara and her family.
Ciara, the daughter of Ray and Mary Cullinane, went to the Mercy School in John’s Road where she made her first singing debut with Mrs Dunphy in Junior Infants.
She then went on to the Loreto where she won the Sister Mary Walshe Memorial Cup for music earlier this year. Ciara has been actively involved in many musical productions since primary school.
Her first love of theatre came when she began with Carmel Corish Wallace School of Performing Arts at seven years old achieving various LAMDA examinations.
Ciara was also a member of the Wexford School of Ballet and Performing Arts for eight years, undertaking both ballet and modern dance examinations.
She is classically- and musical theatre-trained and has spent the last seven years vocal training under Aileen at the County Wexford School of Music achieving seven distinctions and Grade 8 in classical singing with the Associated