Photo: fpmccann.co.uk
Owenbeg is the headquarters of the County Derry Gaelic Athletic Association just outside Dungiven in Northern Ireland. I could say that I felt the name reflected the teamwork, passion and commitment inherent in Gaelic Football (It is still an amateur sport) that I show in my work. As an Englishman married to an Irish woman who I met at University in Northern Ireland in the Seventies I could also say that it reflects my ability to assimilate new ideas and bring people together to gain consensus.
Both might be true, but the reality is far less grandiose. Having set up a Limited Company on leaving the Corporate life in 2009 I needed a name. I didn’t want it to be based on my name or to be some variation on a marketing theme. Fancy names that look and sound like something from Ancient Greece or a Fanatasy Character that supposedly have hidden meaning all sounded way too posy for a one man operation. In the end it was a spur-of-the-moment decision.
My friend and business partner Owen Ashby had been the one person more than anybody else who had eased my transition from corporate life to self employment. I had passed Owenbeg many times, but travelling from Derry Airport to my wife’s home in South Derry on a spring morning in 2009 I saw the the large red Owenbeg sign with its Gaelic spelling and knew instinctively that was what I wanted. The fact that ‘beg’ in Gaelic means small seemed apposite. Not because I am taller than Owen, which I am, but because I definitely felt I was learning from him and was a smaller version of him. In the intervening years I have grown, but the name remains the same.
Owenbeg 