Lackagh entrepreneur Aisling Kearney Burke took the Overall Award at the Atlantic Technology University Award ceremony sponsored by Bank of Ireland at their Mainguard Streeet facilities last week.
In 2014 Aisling Kearney Burke set up her own Beechmount Art Studio in Lackagh and the following year set up Paintclub.
The setting up of Painclub quickly expanded from just one venue in galway city to multiple venues in nine locations around the country where 16 staff were directly employed which created much more employment in auxillary staff through the companies that they worked through.
Also working with many leading national and international companies in teambuilding and development, Paintclub was contiunuously expanding and growing. As the business was very much an in-person business, when Covid 19 came the business came to an immediate standstill, facing closure.
Then Aisling set about setting up Paintclub on-line and within two weeks the first Paintclub online event was held. It proved to be a huge success and after a few weeks Paintclub was back working on the corporate market as well.
The growth was phenomenal and in 2020, during the lockdown, Paintclub increased business by 35% and to date Paintclub have exported to 37 countries across the world since the pandemic started.
Aisling is constantly seeking to develop further, and this led her to taking a postgraduate “Creative Entreprenship and Enterprise Development” course which was run by Creative Enterprise West team at the Atlantic Technology University. The yearlong course was intense as a group of Entrepreneurs working in different fields had to develop new ideas along with continuing to keep their existing projects.
The people of the area warmly congratulate Aisling on her continued success.
