Joel also owes his life to Belfast's medical professional after suffering a life-changing injury
Belfast-based visual artist Joel Simon had only planned to live in Northern Ireland for a year when he first came here to study back in the mid 1990s, but life had other plans.
"At the time my parents were worried about me moving to Belfast and I swore to myself that I would only stay here for a year because I didn't know a soul. The father-of-three's career also took off as he set up two animation companies Flickerpix and Hola Lola. His work as a designer and animation director included Gerry Anderson’s On The Air series and collaborating with artists such as Seamus Heaney, Richard Curtis and Billy Connolly, earning him over 50 international awards.
"They didn't want to amputate and thought they could rescue my leg but in the meantime gangrene had set in. When I told the doctors I lived in Belfast they said the world experts in bullet wounds were based there so I was repatriated to the Royal Victoria Hospital. "French was the language that I spoke the most when growing up and I missed speaking it. Anytime I told people here that I spoke French they said how much they loved the language and had learned it at school," Joel explained.
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