Remember Muc the Flying Pig? Gavin Friday and Laurent Mallet’s 12-foot piggy bank has finally landed near Dublin airport after its busy Kosovo adventures and some quiet time in the shed.

From The Irish Hospice website:
“Visitors to Dublin Airport this year may be surprised by the sight of a 12-foot high, 8-foot wide flying pig known as MUC.

MUC – the brainchild of rock impresario, Gavin Friday, and artist, Laurent Mellet – is the emblem of the Irish Hospice Foundation’s latest fundraising initiative, aimed at raising money to develop hospice facilities for sick children.

MUC involves a series of events nationwide, targeting every sector of the community. Schools and children have been particularly encouraged to participate. Thanks to Fossett’s Circus, one lucky child will win an exciting prize: a free trip to the circus for his or her entire school.

MUC is sponsored and supported by the Irish League of Credit Unions, and each participating Credit Union branch has its own MUC piggy bank and is encouraging members to run MUC events.
We are grateful to the Irish League of Credit Unions, Fossett’s Circus and Aer Rianta for their support.”

From the Irish Independent, dated Sunday June 22:
“One of the most recent pieces to go on display at the airport has an important secondary function – raising funds for the Irish Hospice Foundation. The brainchild of artists Gavin Friday and Lauret Mellet, Muc is a 12 foot high and eight-foot wide stainless-steel pig, which is effectively a piggybank for those wishing to make donations to the hospice organisation. Miniature versions of Muc are also on display, and in use, at most of Ireland’s credit unions. “Art is important,” says Moore, “And at Aer Rianta we are proud that we acknowledge that importance.”"

It’s MUC day! In Ireland, you can lodge your moolah at AIB branches throughout the country.

RTE (Irish television) will screen Gavin’s film ‘Three Wishes For Kosovo’ on Friday, December 17th at 8.00pm on RTE 1

By Gavin Friday
From: Irish Independent, September 26, 1999
“Taxi, Barry’s Balloon’s Phibsboro, then I’m off to Artane to see ‘Joe’ the magic man” ” What’s the story Bud?” “I’m just getting a crash course in balloon magic….” “What are you doing, starting up a circus?”
“No, I’m going to Kosovo” “Kosovo? Why? Are you alright in the head?”
I sat back in the taxi… lit up a cigarette and thought… “Jesus, maybe I’m losing it?”
Kosovo? Why? I don’t really know, it’s all too convoluted and to tell the truth the ‘why?’ is not that important. Like most things in my life, I make it up as I go along… a planned accident. In May of this year, over a few pints myself and a couple of friends, Anne-Louise Kelly and Sheila Roche decided to do something constructive to help the plight of the refugees in Kosovo. We approached ‘Concern’ and offered our services to help fundraise.
We had lots of ideas: one was an art exhibition…. ‘Artists For Kosovo’. Laura Magahy and Aileen Corkery of Temple Bar Properties immediately jumped on board and with their huge support, the Dublin artistic community and the children of St. Audeon’s Christchurch National School produced an incredible body of work.
Another mad idea was a giant flying piggybank. Once again Temple Bar Properties and a cast of thousands helped us out here, but it was the surreal genius of the sculptor Laurent Mellet that brought the idea truly to life: ‘Muc’ the flying piggy bank.
Then in July, three weeks after the N.A.T.O ceasefire, on Concern’s request, we went to Kosovo to shoot a short film, as hundreds of thousands of Kosovar refugees returned to their homeland.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I experienced in the few days I was in Kosovo. From the moment we crossed the border at Macedonia the tension and fear was enough to make one vomit. I was frightened, the film crew were frightened. Everywhere looked and felt like hell on earth. Every village, town, city, we went to was flattened to the ground, and everywhere we went people asked us: “Do you want to film the dead bodies?”
Hundreds of boobytrapped bodies lay decomposing in fields, streams, on roads. Limbs, skeletons, scattered all over the place. Fathers, sons, uncles, missing – presumed dead. Thousands were massacred, mostly men. Strangely my most vivid memory is the smell, something I can’t even begin to describe.
On our last day of filming, we spent an afternoon with a group of refugee children. We played party games, painted pictures, I even got to do a bit of balloon magic (I was crap, so much for my crash course with ‘Joe’ the magic man) it was in this context one could feel some sense of optimism.
I asked the children if they had ‘Three Wishes For Kosovo’… what would they be. Nearly every child said the same wishes:
“To have peace in Kosovo”
“To have a new house”
“To have things the way they used to be”
I put the same question to Dominick McSorley (Head of Concern in Kosovo), and his response struck me deeply:
“I suppose if we could put Kosovo back in time… I think that would be my first wish, maybe to an extent there is a certain amount of guilt on our part, we probably should have seen some of this happening. The signs were there. This country was struggling, and for whatever reasons we didn’t notice it, unfortunately we noticed too late” “My second wish is for the children. That is the future, we have to accept that the adults have borne the brunt of this tragedy and they may never come to terms fully with what has happened – but if the children can be protected now, I think there is a future for this country. And I think that’s it… I haven’t got a third wish…..”
Today in Kosovo over one million refugees have returned to a devastated homeland. Most are homeless. What does the future hold for them longterm? I don’t know, but the immediate future holds one of the coldest and most vicious winters in all of Europe. Please Help.

Gavin has written a piece for this Sunday’s Independent (Irish newspaper) called ‘Three Wishes For Kosovo’. Muc the flying piggy bank’s website should be online this weekend Sunday and will carry the text of the piece on it. The URL of the site will be www.mucoink.com.

The video documentary ‘Three Wishes For Kosovo’ has been completed. The footage was filmed by Gavin Friday & crew in Kosovo earlier this summer. It will be shown on Irish television later this year.
Muc the Flying Piggy Bank, part of the Artists for Kosovo project, will start his tour of Ireland in Cork, 28th September at the National Ploughing Championships.

Two-thirds of the Kosovar refugees who fled the war in April (some 600,000 people) returned to their homeland. These people came back to find widespread destruction: over 500,000 houses were destroyed or seriously damaged; 40% of water sources contaminated by debris, animal and human remains and an estimated 1 million mines have been laid in Kosovo by the Serbian and KLA forces. Every individual experienced a personal loss and trauma, recovery from which will take years.
Discussing this situation one day in the pub with his manager Anne-Louise Kelly, Gavin felt it was time to do something about it. Anne-Louise got in touch with Irish relief organisation Concern who were running the ‘Concern for Kosovo’ appeal.

Three Wishes for Kosovo
Concern asked them to travel to Kosovo to shoot some footage which could be used to highlight the realities of the aftermath of war for the Kosovans. The 30 minute film, Three Wishes for Kosovo, which was produced out of this trip was screened on RTE (Irish television) on Friday, December 17th, 1999.

The Slide Projection Exhibition
As part of the ‘Concern for Kosovo’ appeal, “Artists for Kosovo” was a public art exhibition held in Meeting House Square, in Dublin. The exhibition ran from 27th July to 30th August 1999. The exhibition, which was conceived and inspired by Gavin Friday and curated by Aileen Corkery of Temple Bar Properties, aimed to create awareness, and stimulate reaction to the inhumane situation in Kosovo.
The slide show consisted of images by 34 artists plus work from the children of St. Audoen’s National School, Dublin. The artists themselves came from varying creative backgrounds: photography, graphic design, music, fine arts, architecture and it is from this vast diversity combined with the thoughts of children that gives the exhibition a unique strength and quality.
In addition to the visual projections, Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer composed a special piece of music to accompany the slides.

Laurent Mellet - Muc

Múc the Flying Piggy bank
The second part of the exhibition was artist Laurent Mellet’s sculptural installation of Gavin’s vision of ‘Múc the Flying Pig. Múc was designed by artist Laurent Mellet. Standing 12ft high x 8ft long x 5ft wide, the creation of Múc was inspired by the phrase ‘if pigs could fly’ and is the symbol of hope and possibility for Kosovo. Múc enabled the public, but in particular children, who are excluded from the normal credit card appeals, to ‘feed the pig’ with donations towards the Kosovo Appeal.
With the help of the staff of AIB around the country, Concern and the National Primary Schools of Ireland, ‘Muc’ – the smelly pig toured the towns of Ireland in a blaze of publicity and fun to collect money like a piggy bank for the Kosovo appeal in Ireland.
Educational packs were sent to 4,000 primary schools throughout the country. Boys and girls were encouraged to set up their own collections.

“This is a completely different approach to raising funds for Kosovo”, said Gavin Friday. “The ‘Concern for Kosovo’ Appeal involves a multi programme featuring the unique and surreal flying pig ‘Muc’. The programme, in addition to generating significant funds, aims to educate and raise the awareness of the continued plight of refugees in general”.