Our Lives, Our Journey, Our Culture – Performing Arts/Dance

Multi-Ethnic Sports and Cultures NI (MSCNI) presents a video compilation of how the organisation brings young people of various community backgrounds together and uses dance and performing arts as a medium to help unite irrespective of their race, colour, sex or origin.

Our Lives, Our Journey, Our Culture – Digital Storytelling

Multi-Ethnic Sports and Cultures NI (MSCNI) present a digital storytelling video of how the organisation brings young people of various community backgrounds together and uses sports as a medium to help unite irrespective of their race, colour, sex or origin.

ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN 1972: Voices from the Heart of The Troubles

Presented by The Playhouse Theatre and Peacebuilding Academy

Written by Damian Gorman

Directed by Kieran Griffiths.

The statistics for 1972- the worst year of the ‘Troubles’- are astonishing: almost 500 killings (nearly 100 in the month of July alone); 10,000 shootings, 2,000 explosions, and almost 5,000 people physically injured.

But statistics only take you so far, and they don’t take you inside the hearts of people who were there. 1972 was an extraordinary year- a year when it felt like anything could happen- but it was a year of lives as well as deaths. And here is an evening of voice, of people- gathered by the poet Damian Gorman- which carries inside stories of both.

As part of the production, those who have lost loved ones in the Troubles, due to Covid-19, or in any circumstance, were invited to contribute to Anything Can Happen 1972.  They were able to send objects or photographs of significance or importance to them, to be placed on the other 130 empty chairs in our theatre. This is so that instead of absence, the chairs have something very significant and important on them, to be lit by theatre lights in an act echoing Seamus Heaney’s famous work Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication, in which he describes ‘a sunlit absence’.

To the Beat of the Drum Podcast – Fountain of Harmony

A series of 5 podcasts were released throughout Good Relations Week looking at the work of the Bands Forum over the past 10 years and its work during lockdown.

In the final podcast for Good Relations Week, Derek Moore of the North West Cultural Partnership was in discussion with Steven Travers of the Miami Show Band. They discussed a wide range of topics around marching bands from the repertoire of the bands to the memberships of the bands. They looked at the history and the culture of marching bands here in the City of Londonderry and discussed the work of the Londonderry Bands Forum.

To the Beat of the Drum Podcast – The 3rd Degree

A series of 5 podcasts were released throughout Good Relations Week looking at the work of the Bands Forum over the past 10 years and its work during lockdown.

The fourth in our series of podcasts is presented by Stephen Porter, Co-Ordinator, Londonderry Bands Forum. Stephen was joined by Alex Dougherty, a student from Foyle College in Londonderry looking back at her time at the school, studying for A Levels during lockdown and her future prospects both inside and outside of Northern Ireland as she prepares to start a history degree at Lancaster University. Alex is also an ambassador Holocaust regional ambassador for Northern Ireland

To the Beat of the Drum Podcast – Spring into Tune

A series of 5 podcasts were released throughout Good Relations Week looking at the work of the Bands Forum over the past 10 years and its work during lockdown.

The third in our series of podcasts for Good Relations Week sees Andrew Lynch, Londonderry Bands Forum Educational Outreach Officer look at the work of the Londonderry Bands Forum outreach work and schools programme. This podcast also featured interviews with other North West Cultural Partnership programmes with Darren Milligan, Bready and District Ulster Scots and Georgina Kee McCarter from the Sollus Highland Dancers. The programmes worked with local school and groups teaching flute, bagpipes and Highland Dancing.

This podcast looked at various aspects of their works and the background to the programmes.

 

To the Beat of the Drum Podcast – #FitToMarch

A series of 5 podcasts were released throughout Good Relations Week looking at the work of the Bands Forum over the past 10 years and its work during lockdown.

This episode looks back at our successful #fittomarch initative presented by Andrew Lynch, Londonderry Bands Forum Educational Outreach Officer and Stephen Porter, Londonderry bands Forum Co-Ordinator. We discuss with a number of participants in our fit to march programme, which ran throughout lockdown and encouraged band members to get out walking and count their steps. The programme had over four hundred participants from over thirty bands across Northern Ireland and Scotland.
In this podcast the participants spoke about the benefits the programme had in both their physical and mental health. They also discussed a number of different aspects of what it is like to be in a band.