Twenty-five years after the 1998 peace treaty, known as the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement (GFA), was signed to end the worst of the violence, Northern Ireland remains a deeply segregated place. The ethno-national conflict, euphemistically known as the Troubles, has been followed by a period of relative “post-conflict” stability. The GFA, after two years of negotiations, led to the decommissioning of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and devolution with the formation of a power-sharing government called the Northern Irish Assembly. However, the transition to peace has been a slow one and the region remains deeply divided along Republican/Nationalist/Catholic and Loyalist/Unionist/Protestant lines. This is evidenced by both international politics (e.g. Brexit and the Irish border) and local affairs (e.g. marching season, flag disputes, splinter paramilitary groups). Bitter resentments, historical trauma and intractable political positions has led to the breakdown of consociationalism or power-sharing on multiple occasions.
The watershed moment of the treaty has been followed by a range of creative and cultural responses seeking to make sense of the Troubles and their legacy, including literature in various forms, visual art, oral storytelling, music, performance and material culture exhibitions. Often overlooked in favour of statist interventions, I employ a new term ‘cultural peace work’ to draw attention to the active role of creative cultural production in peacebuilding efforts. Cultural peace work determinedly listens and attends to local voices, to the needs of the marginalized, of those searching for ways to share stories safely and to engage in dialogue about the traumatic past in spaces of trust and care. Collaborative efforts by a network of invested people, often embedded in the communities engaged in conflict, raise awareness of the impact of sectarianism and the ordinary practices that transform structures of exclusion in Northern Ireland.
One example of cultural peace work is the Everyday Objects Transformed by the Conflict Exhibition (EOE) which was curated by Healing Through Remembering, an initiative that examines the legacy of the Troubles. The exhibition first ran from 2012-2014 across the region of Northern Ireland and in the Basque Country. EOE displays a selection of loaned items from people who experienced the Troubles, from a football jersey to a matchbox to a bus ticket, as well as photographic, audio and video items. Each one carries with it a story or a memory that is personal to the individual who owns it and perhaps represents one perspective in the conflict, but set alongside each other all of the items collectively offer a wider view of the communities impacted by the violence. The voices of regular people are inherent to the premise of this cultural venture because they not only choose the object that carries meaning and memory for them, but also describe its relevance, and agree to include it in the collective display with diverse objects from all ‘sides’ of the conflict. This intentional cultural peace work operates at the level of the everyday, not just in terms of venues, such as public libraries, and in the involvement of all tribes in a divided society but in the accessibility of the objects themselves.
A second instance of cultural peace work is an initiative of a creative media arts organisation called The Nerve Centre with locations in the cities of Derry/Londonderry and Belfast. One of its projects is a series of comics or graphic novels aimed at educating young people on the shared histories across the island of Ireland and making space for competing or disputed versions of the past. Housing accounts of key figures or events from both the Catholic and Protestant sides of the divide within the same book stresses the connectedness of historical moments and focuses the reader on the parallel nature of stories, which might overlap or reveal linkages that were previously imperceptible. These historical graphic novels are examples of visual literature that can support the efforts of peacebuilding through the acknowledgement of a shared past that in turn assists in the generation of inter-community trust.
Three graphic novels from The Nerve Centre.
In various ways both of the above initiatives offer ordinary people avenues into the past, often in low-stakes or accessible ways, and invite them to witness the suffering of others, sometimes overtly and sometimes quite peripherally. This of course might mirror the suffering experienced by themselves or their families and aid in moving through competitive victimhood into spaces where empathy and forgiveness can emerge. Ultimately cultural peace work embodies a new mode of being that is awakened in societies emerging from conflict by the interconnection of many voices, organisations, and minds. Therefore, the continued design and operation of novel cultural and creative endeavours and programmes is crucial to the sharing of stories and ideas that move through and across dividing lines to a more peaceful future.
This research is developed from a larger article called “Cultural peace work in ‘post-conflict’ Northern Ireland” published in the Journal of War and Culture (March 2024). It was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: [Grant Number RES0053853].
Louise Harrington
Dr. Louise Harrington is an Assistant Professor in postcolonial studies and contemporary literatures in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta in Canada. She works primarily on cultural representations of war and ethno-religious-national conflict in the 20th and 21st centuries, specializing in the comparative study of Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and the region of South Asia. Her work is grounded in critical border studies, geocriticism, and spatial literary studies. She is also active in research on peace and conflict resolution in cultural production, and migration and intercultural studies.
