Bringing the world to the Shackleton story

While at Cross and Passion College in Kilcullen, Aline Egar dreamed of becoming a primary school teacher, writes Brian Byrne. A lack of fluency in Irish stymied that. “I do love the language, but it wasn’t good enough at the time,” says the Brannockstown woman, now Aline Fitzgerald, who is general manager of the newly opened Shackleton Experience in Athy. Her journey from Brannockstown to that position has arguably been as complicated as some of Ernest Shackleton’s expeditions.

Shelving her original ambition, Aline went on to study Hotel & Catering Management at Brighton College in the UK. After four years there, she worked at several hotels in Ireland, then, in 1996, made another move to another country. “I got a position as Sales Manager with the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts in Chicago,” she says. “It was a fantastic experience in a very beautiful city. My work focused on selling the hotel as a venue for corporate events." Her territory spanned the area between Chicago and the West Coast, and she thrived in her job, earning the company’s President's Club Award twice. However, much as she was enjoying it, there was always a pull to return home. “I was always something of a homebird,” she laughs.

The opportunity to return to Ireland came in 1999, when the group was opening the Four Seasons hotel in Dublin, and she transferred to help with that. Initially, as Sales Manager, she helped build the hotel's profile in the Irish market and worked to attract North American leisure visitors. Later, as Director of Sales & Marketing, she oversaw a broad range of key activities. In 2015, with the Dublin hotel joining the InterContinental Hotel Group, she coordinated communications and interactions with various stakeholders to ensure a seamless transition. Aline says she absolutely enjoyed working with the Four Seasons group, calling it an ‘incredible’ company. “I met many amazing people, and I was mentored and really supported along the way, which was so beneficial. But ultimately I wanted to make a change."

After leaving the hotel business in mid-2015, she took a short-term contract with Trinity College Dublin to manage its involvement in the EU Discover Research event, held every 25 September in over 250 cities as European Researchers Night. "That was a really fun thing to do. It was helping people to understand that science is not just in a laboratory, but also includes other topics and subjects as well. My role was to coordinate with the various schools within Trinity so they'd host a programme on the night. We ended up with something like 75 different events."

The next adventure began when a friend sent her the specification for a role as General Manager of a museum in Dublin's GPO, proposed by An Post as an immersive visitor experience about the prelude and aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising. "I applied and got the opportunity. Ultimately, so much of what I had done in the past related to the museum world. You need to attract visitors. It's very focused on customer service and delivery, and on coordinating everything happening out front and what's happening behind the scenes." Taking the post at the end of 2015 put her right at the heart of the 2016 Commemorations and the opening of the museum in March 2016 in the historical GPO building. "It was an incredible experience," she says. "I worked there for just over eight years, but I had a little girl towards the end of 2019, and she was starting school, so my commute to Dublin wasn't working for me anymore. I left in July of last year, basically giving up my three- to four-hour daily commute to be home. I'd rather spend that time with her than on the N7."

The opportunity to manage the new Shackleton Experience in Athy arose, and Aline took on the role of General Manager in March of this year. Up to its official opening on 10 October, she was immersed in finishing the project. In many ways, it was a repeat of her work with establishing the GPO Museum, though on a physically larger scale. "We're in a historic building that has had many lives. The Experience is on three levels, which is quite extensive. There's a lot for people to engage with, and the dwell time for our visitors is around two hours, which is quite something."

The Experience includes a 1920s-style cinema screening documentaries about Shackleton and his expeditions. "We also have several different interactive pieces — for instance, you can sit in what appears to be the James Caird lifeboat, and you are watching a video telling you about the individuals and that journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia. It's phenomenal, you really feel that you're riding the waves, and you're enduring that trip just like they were back then. You also get the experience of pulling a sledge, giving you the essence of what that must have been like." The over 200 artefacts scattered throughout the museum also indicate how extensive the whole thing is. "The previous museum, which was much smaller, already had such an incredible collection ... we've had many on loan to us, others donated."

You can build it, but will they come? Aline does not doubt that the iconic story of Shackleton and his colleagues has enough pull to make a pilgrimage to Athy a must for many visitors from around the world, not least because the Autumn School devoted to the explorer has become a major international event over the last 25 years. "We're fortunate that we have that following already, with attendees from all over the world. We also maintain relationships with other polar museums, which certainly serve us well. That's a very positive place to start from when you open something of such significance as we now have in Athy."

For Aline, the job fits perfectly with a part of her that has always been comfortable as a tourist in her own land. "Being in the world of tourism appeals to me, shouting from the rooftops about things in Ireland that we're proud of and have every right to be. Here in the Shackleton Experience, we are something that not everybody relates to as being an Irish success story, but he was from Kilkea just out the road, and he was proud about his Irish heritage."

No less proud, probably, than Aline Fitzgerald and her team are to tell his story to a world beating its way to South Kildare.

This article was first published in The Kildare Nationalist.

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