The Spark: summer’s biggest banger comes from a decades-old initiative helping refugee and working-class kids in Cork

This year’s early contender for banger of the summer started in an unlikely place, the idyllic rural community of Lisdoonvarna on the edge of the Burren, West Ireland. The viral hit, The Spark was a collaboration between a crew of pre-teens in Lisdoonvarna and Kabin Studio in Cork City — aka “the real capital of Ireland” — two hours south.

While this collaboration has been widely reported as the track goes viral, what many people don’t know is that it started in an asylum seekers’ home.