20 years on from the good Friday agreement, a look at the relationshipbetween the arts and the Troubles I was only four years old on 10 April 1998, the daythe Good Friday Agreement was signed.
It was an historic day. After two yearsof talks, a generation of bloodshed, and decades of division and acrimony, the BritishPrime Minister, Tony Blair and Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, ushered in a newera of peace. An agreement that united Loyalists and Republicans, Unionist andNationalist leaders, it was a wide ranging historical accord. It marked the endof the conflict in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles. The world may havelargely forgotten the Troubles, but the people of Ireland have not. The impact of the troubles on the island of Ireland,and the rest of Great Britain is far ranging. The political landscape hastransformed since the height of the conflict – a lot has been written on that.
Nowhere has that been more evident in recent months than in the Brexitnegotiations, where Northern Ireland became a pawn in a game of political chessbetween London, Dublin and Brussels – but let’s leave talk on Brexit to theside. There has been limited attention on how the bloodshed influenced thearts, especially since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Historically, textileshave been used as a form of protest, testimony, and storytelling. From AIDS quiltsto Suffrage banners, textiles have emerged in cultures exposed to conflict. Textilesalso arose in response to the Troubles. Dr Karen Nickell is an artist,researcher and lecturer in History and Theory for Textile Art, Design at the Belfast School of Art. She says, “textile responses have notbeen included in art exhibitions or literature about the Troubles and thereforea unique response, almost exclusively by women, is missing from the broadernarrative.
” During the Troubles, people whowished to maintain a neutral position were largely dismissed. Yet, there was a considerablenumber of people with a neutral position – who were often an unstructuredcollection of individuals which included people who encompassed the fulldiversity of society across religion, social class, politics, race and gender. Thesepeople did not have a clear identity or historical symbolism or imagery to drawupon to make their position manifest in a visual way.
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Their position is oftenthought of in a negative way, a feeling of belonging to neither side, ratherthan having a positive and unified position. Since the conflict came to an endwith the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, there has been a pressure inNorthern Ireland to express a positive neutral, shared identity,cross-community image to the rest of the world (largely due to heavily fundedreconciliation and piece projects). Nickell argues that there “may still be noclear visual language to effectively communicate this.” In 2006, four groups cametogether from different sides of the divide to make a cross-community quilt,Shared Visions. The project was facilitated by Quaker House Belfast and thegroups were from inter-face areas of inner-city Belfast (where Nationalist,Unionist, Republican and Loyalist communities fought against each other) thathad experienced long-term and deeply entrenched sectarian attitudes andactions. Thirty-two women worked together to make a quilt that demonstrated “acoming together to express a vision for a new inclusive Northern Irelandsociety.” The Belfast International ArtsFestival is Northern Ireland’s largest annual arts event and one of theregion’s oldest celebrations of live performance. Launched in the early 1960s,it survived the decades-long violence of the Troubles only to find itselfteetering on the brink of collapse in recent years as a succession of fundingcrises threatened to envelop it.
However, last year, the festival had a renewedsense of vigour as it refashioned itself into what organisers describeas “a genuinely civic event of contemporary arts and ideas of internationalappeal and stature”. Until 2015, it was known as the Belfast Festival atQueen’s. Initially, it concentrated on staging events within the university – ashort-walk from a city centre that found itself ravaged by bombs and scarred byone atrocity after another.
“In the darkest days of the Troubles, it was thesole cultural candle in the long, dark night of the conflict. There was verylittle opportunity at other times of the year for audiences and communities to engagewith artists from Northern Ireland.” The relationship between the artsand conflict is fascinating.
Art has the power of making people from differentbackgrounds come together. 20 years on from the signing of the Good FridayAgreement, perhaps now is a better time than ever to explore the power of the arts,and the healing power they can have on a community.
