We started out the day with the infamous Black Taxi Political Tour in Belfast. Our tour was spent by going through different Catholic and Protestant communities examining history by looking at murals and other landmarks. Our first stop was at the international wall mural site, which changes it murals every two years in order to fully tell the complex stories of Northern Ireland’s political history. Each of these murals hold a significant piece of history, and our tour guide explained the different elements, which were presented pictorially. We continued on at the Most Holy Redeemer Clonard Church. Our tour guide explained it as being like “a jewel in a crown”, saying that the Irish and British met secretly at this church to have conversations about how to end the conflict. This was something that had never been done before.
Next we moved to the Clonard Martyrs Memorial Garden, where the peace wall divides the Catholic from the Protestant communities for four miles. This particular memorial garden provided information on the attacks of Bombay Street as well as honored those from that community who had died in the conflict. We then looked at the peace wall, which was erected in 1969. This particular wall has colorful graffiti and is open to autographs and a personal message.
Throughout our tour, we stopped to view murals both in the Catholic and Protestant communities. Each side contains positive and negative images depicting their culture, politics, history, and the conflict. The last mural we visited had an adverse impact.
Our tour guide explained to us about the mural saying, “everyone is entitled to their culture, we can’t change them they can’t change us.” The tour provided us with greater detail the political context of the city we are residing in.
After lunch we visited Paul Smith at the Public Achievement office learning about his programs around civic spaces. It was interesting to learn that Paul modeled his program around the civic engagement programs in Minnesota. Paul is connected to the University of Minnesota faculty in his studies with civic engagement. He used the model of a co-creative process between youth and adults working together. Paul provided us with a metaphor of wearing colored glasses that shape our perspectives on life. This perspective is defined by others and ourselves. Especially in Northern Ireland, many people’s perspective and identities are shaped by the “other” rather than themselves. The focus of Public Achievement in Belfast is bringing youth together against a culture of such a divide (e.g. Where 95% of schools and public housing our segregated). Paul left us with a message, he sees youth work as a craft he is still learning, and “particularly from young people, and that the minute you cease to learn from young people is the minute you are no longer a youth worker.”
We were offered the unique opportunity to visit a cross-community peace mural unveiling through a program led by Steven Hughes called “Crossing Bridges”. This program includes eight groups of youth, four Catholic and four Protestant. These groups see themselves as one culture divided with shared perspectives. The mural depicts a shared history of the communities with a message of peace. Steven Hughes explained how one side is more advanced in changing the negative murals to culturally positive. This mural is part of a project to advance this process.
We then got the opportunity to sit with the youth on a panel discussion on four speakers who were deliberately selected from diverse backgrounds. They each had different perspectives, generations, and involvement with the conflict. Panel members included a Civil Rights chairman, a Republican prisoner who participated in the hunger strike, a Loyalist advocate and a Good Relations officer to the Belfast Council. The discussion began with two of the youth speaking on their experiences in the program. One of the youth stated about “Crossing Bridges”, “we worked on this not just as Catholics and Protestants but as young people together.” The panelists then spoke on insights into important parts of their lives. The discussion also allowed for the youth to ask questions for clarification and a reflection period. The Civil Rights chairman ended with a message saying, “violence led nowhere, progress could only be made through non-violent protests and talks”.
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