As most of you reading this know, Fionnathan Productions is an innovative, son-and-father led, community driven project exploring how far we can go toward creating for and with Fionn a ‘great life’ (as he defines it). And now, another year of remarkable accomplishments for this young man (and a few big failures, as usual) is complete. This year saw our 10th anniversary. A great year, a dismal year, in so many moments (mostly great, by our calculation). Fionn turned 29. He will be half Jonathan’s age in 2027. (Do the math, if you must.) We divided this report into the following categories. Education & Research, Advocacy & People, The Arts & Travel, Abundance & What’s Ahead. We hope you enjoy reading it, and feel free to give us feedback about any of it.
Arts-specific work in 2025 has been mostly music performance. Fionn racked up
30 busking shows near home, a total of 102 hours. Needless to say, his local celebrity as a fiddler continues to grow. For St Patrick’s Day, he played music at Times Square, The Rockefeller Center Plaza and other iconic locations around Manhattan.
Fionn took the stage to perform many times: Ireland’s UN Offices; Fraunces Tavern (the oldest bar in NYC); Paddy Riley’s Music Bar, NYC; an international sports conference in Kerry; Milwaukee Irish Fest; Helsinki’s Outsider Art Fest; at the memorial service of a beloved cousin in Ohio; and the Caledonian Pub, and the Belonging Forum, both in Toronto.
Early in the year we were chosen as TradFest Ambassadors, after our performance headlining the new TradFest / AbleFest partnership.
This was announced through an interview on WLIW-FM Long Island, our first ‘appearance’ on a PBS station.
TradFest arranged for us to perform three shows on the Snug Stage at Milwaukee Irish Fest (North America’s largest Irish music festival) at the Outsider Art Fest of Helsinki, and to appear at various other promotional events.
There are big things planned for the next TradFest - curating shows, hosting an Inclusive and Accessible Festivals Forum, etc. - a few weeks from now.
We didn’t find much time (or suitable space) to create paintings and drawings, apart from a blitz to produce original material for display/sale at a table provided to us by the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress in Worcester. These were primarily continued explorations of two themes we’ve worked extensively in the past: Coffee Stain Creatures, and Circles of Support. Some of our work is now available on our website, fionnathan.com, and we suggest you buy it while you can.
And there was one entire weekend we devoted to crafting, an Art Retreat we conducted as part of our Creative Approaches to Practical Community Advocacy (CAPCA) Program. And the 24 crafters who came together for that weekend in Galway returned to Eyre Square for the first week of the Christmas Market, where Fionnathan hosted a craft stall. We are looking at doing this annually.
We're raising money to spread love all around the world through our work. Help us continue on this journey.
