Dana: Hope and joy for challenging times

ByDave Hall

Dana: Hope and joy for challenging times

These may be challenging times, but for believers they are also filled with hope and joy.

That will be Dana’s message when she opens CRE 2017 on Tue 17 Oct (10am).

‘I am happy and honoured to cut the ribbon on this wonderful exhibition,’ said Dana, Ireland’s first winner of the Eurovision Song Contest. ‘I’m really looking forward to being with everyone at Sandown Park but then I always enjoy being with hopeful, joyful people.’

As an 18-year-old schoolgirl in 1970 she was the last of 12 performers to sing before an estimated viewing audience of 200 million. Her ‘All Kinds of Everything’ pushed the UK’s entry, sung by Mary Hopkin, into second place.

‘It is a special pleasure to welcome Dana back to CRE,’ said the exhibition’s new owner, Steve Goddard. ‘And I’m especially delighted she will be with us for all three days when she will sing, be interviewed about her distinguished career in music and politics and take part in Worship Alive!’

Dana last opened the exhibition in 1993.

‘It has been some years since I last attended CRE and it is wonderful to see that with Steve and his wife, Allison, it continues to inspire and inform the Christian family,’ she said.

Nominated to run in the 1997 Irish Presidential election, the first non-political candidate ever to do so, she campaigned to protect Christian family values, and while not winning, took 14 per cent of the votes, ahead of one of Ireland’s major political parties. She was subsequently elected as an MEP, representing Ireland’s Connacht-Ulster constituency for five years until 2004.

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