Tag: Community Development
Tommy Wilson
Tommy Wilson grew up on the Donegall Road in the Village area of Belfast. “We had nowhere to go, we had to run the streets. The place where I lived was just housing and there were no green spots whatsoever to play gam...
The Rape and Plunder of the Shankill Revisited
Traumatic change came to the inner city communities of Belfast in the 1970s with large scale redevelopment, ring roads planned to encircle the city and whole communities being wiped away by the bulldozer. One of those...
The Edge of the World
In the shadow of Belfast’s Black Mountain lies the Turf Lodge housing estate, which for most of its 50 year history has been the scene of much poverty and social unrest. Originally, the estate was built to house peopl...
Jackie Redpath
Jackie Redpath grew up in the Woodvale area of the upper Shankill Road, a child of Evangelical Christian parents, his early life was dominated by the Shankill Baptist Church. “It was a very strict evangelical, fundame...
WRDA Lectures – Baroness May Blood
The inaugural lecture of the Anna Eggert lecture series, organised by the WRDA. Baroness May Blood was the speaker for the afternoon and delivered a biographical lecture entitled “From the factory floor to the House ...
The Law Centre
The Law Centre NI was set up in the early 1970s by a dedicated group of solicitors to help those who suffered social inequalities. “It was about using the law as one aspect of a much broader campaign involving tena...
Annie Armstrong
Annie grew up in the lower Springfield area of west Belfast, a working class area of factories and mills, one of which was James Mackie & Sons or Mackies as they were known locally, a textile machinery and enginee...
Becoming Irish – Stories of an Indian Community
Connections between India and Ireland have been evolving since at least the 18th century but it wasn’t until after World War Two, that people from India came to Northern Ireland in significant numbers, many of them af...
Helen Bell
Born in 1947 in Hopewell Street at the bottom of the Shankill Road, Helen remembers the late 1960s and the first time that real “trouble” started on the Shankill Road, with rioting and flares being shot into the air. ...
May Blood
May was born during World War Two and grew up in Roden Street, a mixed area of Belfast with her mother and sister. He family was separated due to the evacuations during the war. “For the first six years of my life I t...
Kathleen Kelly
The ten years, Kathleen spent as a teacher in the primary school in North Queen Street, brought home to her the poverty in which the children she taught, lived. Originally from east Belfast, where her father was a ...
Joseph Ricketts
Born and raised in Jamaica, Joseph’s father was a contractor who believed his sons should be responsible for their own land and be able to manage work on a farm. When they came of age, Joseph and his three brothers ha...