On March 15th 2020, with the full force of a global pandemic upon us, the pubs of Ireland were forced to close. Their absence has been felt by many, but none more so than those who rely on pubs for social interaction.

Running from November 2020 to January 2021, The Snug Project was a calendar and limited edition print sale created by Stills & Motion to highlight this rising social issue. All profits from sales were in aid of ALONE, a national organisation that strives to enable older people to age at home, safely and securely, for as long as they wish. The project featured 12 images of empty Irish pub snugs as captured by Finn over 10 years ago for a commercial project, which can be viewed here.

Over the course of eight weeks, we sold over 2000 calendars and 240 prints, through thesnugproject.com and over 20 stockists, shipping to 23 countries on six continents. We were delighted to be able to donate €22,816.85 to ALONE.

The response to the project was overwhelming and heartfelt. We were delighted to be featured by a rich variety of media outlets who had kind things to say about our calendar.

“The charity calendar features photographs by Finn Richards taken of snugs across Ireland, making us yearn for normality, and highlighting the communal value of pubs.”

Jenny Brewer, It’s Nice That

“The absence of pubs has been a feature of life this year, and The Snug Project, a calendar documenting 12 of Ireland’s most iconic snugs, is a reminder of how pubs are often at the heart of communities.”

Claire O’Mahony, The Independent

We also got many messages from customers expressing how much they loved both the calendar and the theme of the project:

“My beautiful, beautiful calendar arrived. Absolutely love it. The pictures. The fonts. The weight of the paper. And the little beer mat. Gorgeous. Well done.”
“Just received my calendar in the post and felt compelled to say thank you. The paper quality is insane! That’s some heavy, high quality paper there. You can tell that no detail was overlooked in creating and producing these calendars and it shows."

We were particularly delighted that The Snug Project was included in the 100 Archive 2020, an Irish design platform that creates an annual archive of 100 notable projects.

Stills & Motion assembled a team that designed, printed, sold and distributed calendars and limited edition prints. The project is indebted to the following people:

Paul Guinan designed the calendar and all other printed material, and created The Snug Project identity which included social and web elements.

Sally McCarthy designed, implemented and managed the social media aspect of this entire project.

Fiona Donnellan of Sustainable PR developed a PR strategy and managed all of the connections with media organisations.

Ciaran Smith and his team at Plus Print beautifully printed our calendar on Munken Pure Rough paper.

Russell Simmons at Hen's Teeth printed all of the limited edition prints, and packaged and shipped both the prints and calendars.

Ryan Kavanagh made a short animated film that closed up the project and announced all of the results.