Reflections on the British Council Peace and Beyond Conference, Belfast, April 2018
Category Archives: Blog
Mairtín Crawford Poetry Award Workshop with Moyra Donaldson
I like anything that delivers on its pitch and that was certainly the case with the Mairtín Crawford Award Workshop: Preparing Poetry For Submission, April15th at the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast.
Continue reading Mairtín Crawford Poetry Award Workshop with Moyra Donaldson
Novel Research 4- Abandoned: Not Forgotten?
The fourth research trip for my novel (6th – 17th April), coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, was necessarily a time of public reflection, assessment and forecasting about peace and conflict, in great depth and with many of the major actors back in the spotlight.
Continue reading Novel Research 4- Abandoned: Not Forgotten?
Good Friday – Weekend Word
‘Good Morning Wales’ programme, BBC Radio Wales with Felicity Evans and Wyre Davies.
Novel Research, Kindness and Methodology
The third research trip for my novel started and ended with snow. My flight from Cardiff to Belfast was delayed by 23 inches of it near the airport and by another fall on the return but I encountered nothing other than warmth from the people I met in Northern Ireland.
It was a pleasure to spend time with teachers, schoolchildren, community workers, experts in Irish and Ulster Scots, journalists, farmers and agricultural experts. I also enjoyed two great reading gigs and came home with a prize certificate.
A New Normal – Journalists and Belief
BBC Review of Religion and Ethics Output – an update on the implications
http://www.iwa.wales/click/2018/01/journalists-belief-new-normal/
Novel Research, Kindness and Trauma
Research Trip 2 for my novel, from 21st January to 2nd February in Northern Ireland, gave me access to generously shared experience and expertise from writers, sociologists, historians, academics, journalists, teachers and an educationalist, former civil servants, librarians, language activists, clergy, lawyers, a farmer, a statistician, a youth worker and many who shared from the cutting edge of their painfully gained experience.
I was struck too by the kindness with which I was treated.
I cannot do justice to the events and individuals who gave me their time. I will, however, single out, among the public events I attended, the conference organised by the Ulster University Faculty of Health and Life Sciences: Addressing the Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma and Mental Illness in Northern Ireland.
I had noticed something of a narrative about Northern Ireland along the lines of: the effect of the Troubles is exaggerated; it’s all behind us now and I wanted to get beyond personal opinion to some facts about ‘legacy’ and ‘impact’.
Wales Arts Review – Raising the Profile of Women Writers
A New Normal – BBC Religion & Ethics Review
The BBC’s Review of its Religion and Ethics output and programme-making practice has important immediate and long-term implications. I want to focus not so much on what programmes will get made as a result of its findings but on the change to media culture that I believe will follow from the implementation of its decisions.
This change will be seen in:
*the training of journalists of the future;
*the rising prominence of religious literacy as a concept, as a skill worth cultivating and an essential tool of self-understanding and of any claim to be an interpreter of the times;
*the development of a type of ‘belief literacy’, beyond religious literacy and well beyond the BBC.
The Review has launched a set of new norms, along with a raft of new means of consolidating and progressing them.
Continue reading A New Normal – BBC Religion & Ethics Review
The Chimes – Dickens for our times
Don’t miss ‘The Chimes’ in its London run from 19th – 30th December. This staging of Charles Dickens’ second ‘Christmas Book’ as musical theatre is strikingly confident in its mix of professional actors and ‘an ensemble of men and women who have been homeless and are re-building their lives’.
The high quality of the songs by Conor Linehan with musical direction by Cathal Synnott plus their excellent delivery by a well-drilled cast make this a real treat.
The script, while staying close to the original story, blends in contemporary resonances a-plenty. Continue reading The Chimes – Dickens for our times