Tag: Arts
Darren Ferguson
Darren grew up in Glengormley. He recalls a time when bomb scares were common. “Me and my brother were fascinated when they brought out the robots to defuse these bombs. I have very clear memories of the police com...
Tura Arutura
Tura grew up in Chitungwiza in Zimbabwe during the pre-war period. He recalls it as being a “very colourful beautiful country. Very warm, very hot, it also reflects the nature of the people as well. They wear their he...
Jonny Tiernan
Jonny remembers his time spent at school as a turbulent experience. He was taken out of one school as he felt he was being victimised and at 16, Jonny left school and enrolled in a course called Quest. It meant he cou...
Helen Crickard
Helen grew up in a family of ten, five boys and five girls in Carrickfergus. “My early childhood in Carrickfergus was great, coming from a big family there was always something going on, we lived in a nice housing ...
Mark Ervine
Mark’s childhood was spent growing up in the Woodstock and Ravenhill areas of east Belfast, a socially deprived area of the city, a loyalist community and one where as Mark explains ‘There was a great sense of commun...
Raising Standards
The Conservative Party has just won the elections under John Major. General Sir Patrick Mayhew is Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Albert Reynolds is Taoiseach in the south of Ireland. Against the backdrop of ...
Mo McDevitt
Mo was born on the Donegall Road in Matilda Street and moved to Ashley Avenue on the Lisburn Road in south Belfast when she was 5 years old. “It was not the Golden Mile, but it was an area of warm people, again the...
Padraic Fiacc
Poet Padraic Fiacc was born Patrick Joseph (Joe) O Connor in Belfast on Elizabeth Street in 1923. The First World War had ended and Padraic remembers that “everybody went half mad when the war was over, and my moth...
JB Vallely
JB Vallely was born in Armagh in 1941 and apart from a couple of years at the Belfast Art College and Edinburgh, has lived all his life in the city. He was always determined to express himself through painting. “Wh...
In Our Time – Creating Arts Within Reach
Belfast has seen a remarkable expansion in community arts activity over the last forty years, since the 1970s, putting it at the forefront of the movement within the UK and Ireland to change the way art is seen. It ha...