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| How Derry's year as UK city of culture reawakened the voice of idealism | How Derry's year as UK city of culture reawakened the voice of idealism |
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| A chill, pluvial wind off the Atlantic whips the streets around Rathmore shopping centre on the slopes of the Creggan estate in "Derry-Londonderry" – as the parlance now calls the city on the Foyle river, just over the border between the Irish Republic and the six counties of the north. The Creggan was famous for decades as the largest housing estate in the republican heartland of "Free Derry", one-time stockade of the IRA and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). | A chill, pluvial wind off the Atlantic whips the streets around Rathmore shopping centre on the slopes of the Creggan estate in "Derry-Londonderry" – as the parlance now calls the city on the Foyle river, just over the border between the Irish Republic and the six counties of the north. The Creggan was famous for decades as the largest housing estate in the republican heartland of "Free Derry", one-time stockade of the IRA and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). |
| This is no normal November day at the shops in peacetime Derry, nor is it a normal mall. Located on the spot from which the Bloody Sunday civil rights march set out in 1972, this is a co-operative built by, and belonging to, the community – managed by Conal McFeely, brother of a long-time republican prisoner who joined the IRA after his best friend was killed on Bloody Sunday. Today McFeely presents a film by British director Mike Grigsby, The Silent War, a documentary originally screened in 1990, which recorded everyday life under an army of occupation. | This is no normal November day at the shops in peacetime Derry, nor is it a normal mall. Located on the spot from which the Bloody Sunday civil rights march set out in 1972, this is a co-operative built by, and belonging to, the community – managed by Conal McFeely, brother of a long-time republican prisoner who joined the IRA after his best friend was killed on Bloody Sunday. Today McFeely presents a film by British director Mike Grigsby, The Silent War, a documentary originally screened in 1990, which recorded everyday life under an army of occupation. |
| It's another afternoon towards the end of Derry's year as UK city of culture: Danny Boyle visits next weekend and Sam Shepard premieres his new play a week later. By any standards, this has been an effervescence of the arts. | It's another afternoon towards the end of Derry's year as UK city of culture: Danny Boyle visits next weekend and Sam Shepard premieres his new play a week later. By any standards, this has been an effervescence of the arts. |
| But beneath the surface of cultural prestige, the resounding achievement of Derry's year as city of culture lies in the way it not only refused to airbrush the Troubles and Bloody Sunday with arty-farty gloss, but engaged in a reckoning with the recent past, beyond the politicians' patois of reconciliation. "We've tried to forge a relationship to the Troubles, to face them and deal with them in such a way that overcomes them," says Martin Melarkey, one of the organisers, "telling new stories in this city, but without forgetting that we live in a haunted place, without insulting the dead and bereaved." | But beneath the surface of cultural prestige, the resounding achievement of Derry's year as city of culture lies in the way it not only refused to airbrush the Troubles and Bloody Sunday with arty-farty gloss, but engaged in a reckoning with the recent past, beyond the politicians' patois of reconciliation. "We've tried to forge a relationship to the Troubles, to face them and deal with them in such a way that overcomes them," says Martin Melarkey, one of the organisers, "telling new stories in this city, but without forgetting that we live in a haunted place, without insulting the dead and bereaved." |
| As the Derry-born film producer Andrew Eaton, whose father was killed by the IRA, puts it: "I've always thought we needed to confront all this head on and city of culture has been like some South-African-style truth and reconciliation process, but through a belief that art really can change society." | As the Derry-born film producer Andrew Eaton, whose father was killed by the IRA, puts it: "I've always thought we needed to confront all this head on and city of culture has been like some South-African-style truth and reconciliation process, but through a belief that art really can change society." |
| Derry's year has been creatively edgy, subversive, joyful and new, propelled by a belief in the veracity of music and movies over bombs and bullets; a belief that outdoor showings of Metropolis in pouring rain or Psycho with a full orchestra can help inform "a new identity beyond Catholic v Protestant, British v IRA, loyalist v INLA, or whatever", as Derry-born actress and singer Bronagh Gallagher puts it. | Derry's year has been creatively edgy, subversive, joyful and new, propelled by a belief in the veracity of music and movies over bombs and bullets; a belief that outdoor showings of Metropolis in pouring rain or Psycho with a full orchestra can help inform "a new identity beyond Catholic v Protestant, British v IRA, loyalist v INLA, or whatever", as Derry-born actress and singer Bronagh Gallagher puts it. |
| At the Other Voices festival in February, Gallagher played a hurricane of a homecoming concert in a long-disused church that's now a venue called the Glassworks, then another to inaugurate Ebrington Square beside the barracks from which the killers of the British Parachute Regiment launched the Bloody Sunday massacre, and to which they returned afterwards. The voltage and depth of feeling was palpable as Derry's youth of whatever creed or label embraced their city's First Daughter. | At the Other Voices festival in February, Gallagher played a hurricane of a homecoming concert in a long-disused church that's now a venue called the Glassworks, then another to inaugurate Ebrington Square beside the barracks from which the killers of the British Parachute Regiment launched the Bloody Sunday massacre, and to which they returned afterwards. The voltage and depth of feeling was palpable as Derry's youth of whatever creed or label embraced their city's First Daughter. |
| But for Bronagh, the crucial moment came in 2010 when the Saville report on Bloody Sunday acknowledged the truth, after decades of British cover-up. "You take on the big man," she says, "and the big man runs you down. But here in Derry, we stayed standing until the big man apologised. After that, we found our voice and that's where city of culture begins." | But for Bronagh, the crucial moment came in 2010 when the Saville report on Bloody Sunday acknowledged the truth, after decades of British cover-up. "You take on the big man," she says, "and the big man runs you down. But here in Derry, we stayed standing until the big man apologised. After that, we found our voice and that's where city of culture begins." |
| Among the more cogent events in Derry's year was the return of film director Paul Greengrass, bringing "home" his film Bloody Sunday, premiered here eight years before Saville, for a screening at the Rathmore centre last month. "Derry was the same, and it had changed," says Greengrass. "This place didn't exist when I was last in Derry. There we were in Creggan, which still has desperate problems and not much of a peace dividend, to be honest. And there's still a significant amount of, you know… activity" – the area remains a redoubt for the Real IRA and paramilitary cells defiant of the peace process – "but we're in this amazing space, built by the community, serving the community with shops, movies, music." | Among the more cogent events in Derry's year was the return of film director Paul Greengrass, bringing "home" his film Bloody Sunday, premiered here eight years before Saville, for a screening at the Rathmore centre last month. "Derry was the same, and it had changed," says Greengrass. "This place didn't exist when I was last in Derry. There we were in Creggan, which still has desperate problems and not much of a peace dividend, to be honest. And there's still a significant amount of, you know… activity" – the area remains a redoubt for the Real IRA and paramilitary cells defiant of the peace process – "but we're in this amazing space, built by the community, serving the community with shops, movies, music." |
| Greengrass's career followed the Troubles from their darkest moment to this one: in 1980, he researched a Granada TV World in Action programme that interviewed the first hunger strikers for political status inside Long Kesh/Maze internment camp. Greengrass kept in touch with one of the hunger-striking "blanket men", Ray McCartney: "I'd seen a lot of him while making Bloody Sunday, but not for six years," he says. And there was McCartney, in the audience for the screening of Greengrass's latest film, Captain Phillips. | Greengrass's career followed the Troubles from their darkest moment to this one: in 1980, he researched a Granada TV World in Action programme that interviewed the first hunger strikers for political status inside Long Kesh/Maze internment camp. Greengrass kept in touch with one of the hunger-striking "blanket men", Ray McCartney: "I'd seen a lot of him while making Bloody Sunday, but not for six years," he says. And there was McCartney, in the audience for the screening of Greengrass's latest film, Captain Phillips. |
| "We went for coffee afterwards," recalls Greengrass, before going on to recount McCartney's own incredible story: "Raymond became IRA officer commanding inside the Maze and played a crucial role in the secret negotiations that eventually led to the peace process. He helped persuade the large numbers of IRA men inside the H Blocks to accept a peace that respected both traditions inside Northern Ireland." McCartney is now a Sinn Féin member of the Northern Ireland assembly. | "We went for coffee afterwards," recalls Greengrass, before going on to recount McCartney's own incredible story: "Raymond became IRA officer commanding inside the Maze and played a crucial role in the secret negotiations that eventually led to the peace process. He helped persuade the large numbers of IRA men inside the H Blocks to accept a peace that respected both traditions inside Northern Ireland." McCartney is now a Sinn Féin member of the Northern Ireland assembly. |
| But Greengrass's salient point is wider and political: "Derry," he says, "was the cradle of political creativity in the 1960s, where the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland began, but was driven underground by Bloody Sunday. After that, the British army and Provisionals shared the stage and it would take 30 years for the idea of rights rather than competing nationalisms to re-emerge, fuel the peace process and now all this." | But Greengrass's salient point is wider and political: "Derry," he says, "was the cradle of political creativity in the 1960s, where the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland began, but was driven underground by Bloody Sunday. After that, the British army and Provisionals shared the stage and it would take 30 years for the idea of rights rather than competing nationalisms to re-emerge, fuel the peace process and now all this." |
| Greengrass calls his Bloody Sunday "my homage to Gillo Pontecorvo's great film The Battle of Algiers, made in 1965, the politics of which were that the solution to Algeria's problem was the expulsion of the French colonialists – and people taking over the casbah at the end. That made sense growing up in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. But we who grew up in the 1970s could see that problems were not solved just by booting out the colonial oppressor; we had the example of Northern Ireland, which taught that you won't solve your problem by choosing between two nationalisms staking a claim for the same territory. | Greengrass calls his Bloody Sunday "my homage to Gillo Pontecorvo's great film The Battle of Algiers, made in 1965, the politics of which were that the solution to Algeria's problem was the expulsion of the French colonialists – and people taking over the casbah at the end. That made sense growing up in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. But we who grew up in the 1970s could see that problems were not solved just by booting out the colonial oppressor; we had the example of Northern Ireland, which taught that you won't solve your problem by choosing between two nationalisms staking a claim for the same territory. |
| "But in Derry they had already advanced the idea of shared rights as a solution. They'd realised back in 1968 that you can't send the Protestants home, because they are home. Derry's come back to that, the idea of shared civil rights – this is Derry claiming back its best tradition, cradle of the animating idea for most conflict-resolution in the world today." | "But in Derry they had already advanced the idea of shared rights as a solution. They'd realised back in 1968 that you can't send the Protestants home, because they are home. Derry's come back to that, the idea of shared civil rights – this is Derry claiming back its best tradition, cradle of the animating idea for most conflict-resolution in the world today." |
| I too cut my professional teeth in Derry for World in Action: researching a programme banned in 1981 by the Independent Broadcasting Authority for a shot it contained of hunger striker Patsy O'Hara in his coffin, surrounded by an INLA honour guard. "Ah yes," says Martin Melarkey, "I know one of the people who was in that picture. He's a taxi driver now." It took me a moment to register what he was saying – of course, one of the guards; the Troubles, unlike football matches, don't end when the whistle blows. | I too cut my professional teeth in Derry for World in Action: researching a programme banned in 1981 by the Independent Broadcasting Authority for a shot it contained of hunger striker Patsy O'Hara in his coffin, surrounded by an INLA honour guard. "Ah yes," says Martin Melarkey, "I know one of the people who was in that picture. He's a taxi driver now." It took me a moment to register what he was saying – of course, one of the guards; the Troubles, unlike football matches, don't end when the whistle blows. |
| According to Melarkey, for city of culture, Derry had simultaneously to "reckon with the Troubles and reflect the fact that our artists had been living in a police state and a warzone, but also create a new image for the city. There was always that tension between the reality of the city's experience and those people saying move on. You could not be entrenched in one or the other, but you'd get criticised by both. On one hand, if you just take the murals on the walls, you're missing something; on the other, if all you want to do is sell a new image internationally, you insult those who went through this or lost family – as did that recent suggestion for an amnesty for those who killed people." | According to Melarkey, for city of culture, Derry had simultaneously to "reckon with the Troubles and reflect the fact that our artists had been living in a police state and a warzone, but also create a new image for the city. There was always that tension between the reality of the city's experience and those people saying move on. You could not be entrenched in one or the other, but you'd get criticised by both. On one hand, if you just take the murals on the walls, you're missing something; on the other, if all you want to do is sell a new image internationally, you insult those who went through this or lost family – as did that recent suggestion for an amnesty for those who killed people." |
| The raw truth, says Melarkey, "is that even people who weren't born during the worst times live in that haunted landscape. Paramilitaries and paramilitary culture are still with us." He cites a new video artwork by Willie Doherty, the artist twice nominated for the Turner prize, inspired by an incident last year when a teenager suspected of drug dealing was taken by his father to be kneecapped by the dissident paramilitary cell, Republican Action Against Drugs. "And yet," says Melarkey, "we had people saying, 'The less said about that kind of thing the better.'" | The raw truth, says Melarkey, "is that even people who weren't born during the worst times live in that haunted landscape. Paramilitaries and paramilitary culture are still with us." He cites a new video artwork by Willie Doherty, the artist twice nominated for the Turner prize, inspired by an incident last year when a teenager suspected of drug dealing was taken by his father to be kneecapped by the dissident paramilitary cell, Republican Action Against Drugs. "And yet," says Melarkey, "we had people saying, 'The less said about that kind of thing the better.'" |
| The film promoting Derry's bid to be UK city of culture was shot by Mark McCauley and contained the last-ever footage of County Derry-born Seamus Heaney reading his poetry, pleading: "Once in a lifetime/ The longed-for tidal wave/ Of justice can rise up/ And hope and history rhyme." | |
| McCauley also included the footage in his latest film: a heart-wrenching homage to Derry, entitled A City Dreaming; spoken memoir, illustrated by archive film, of broadcaster Gerry Anderson, who likens his frontier town to "a state within a state, Monaco without the money". | McCauley also included the footage in his latest film: a heart-wrenching homage to Derry, entitled A City Dreaming; spoken memoir, illustrated by archive film, of broadcaster Gerry Anderson, who likens his frontier town to "a state within a state, Monaco without the money". |
| He emigrated to Canada in the early 1970s, after watching the police break up a St Patrick's Day parade at which a 13-year-old girl he knew was assaulted with an officer's truncheon, as were civil rights marchers, after which "the well-meaning and the just slipped quietly away" so that battle might begin. | He emigrated to Canada in the early 1970s, after watching the police break up a St Patrick's Day parade at which a 13-year-old girl he knew was assaulted with an officer's truncheon, as were civil rights marchers, after which "the well-meaning and the just slipped quietly away" so that battle might begin. |
| McCauley and I walk in the rain and talk on that theme, echoing Greengrass: "A lot of what's happened this year in Derry came from the same urges as the movements of the 1960s," he reflects. "But that idealism was subsumed for decades by the violence of the Troubles. It couldn't survive; this city is too small to take that level of warfare for so long. Human beings hurt one another, they become hard; eventually, the hard men take over." | McCauley and I walk in the rain and talk on that theme, echoing Greengrass: "A lot of what's happened this year in Derry came from the same urges as the movements of the 1960s," he reflects. "But that idealism was subsumed for decades by the violence of the Troubles. It couldn't survive; this city is too small to take that level of warfare for so long. Human beings hurt one another, they become hard; eventually, the hard men take over." |
| But this year, says McCauley: "I've seen people awakened by the scale of these public events. Our city centre has for years been made of dark, dangerous streets; people had become conditioned into being frightened. But now those streets were full. I saw my city with different eyes and thought: this is incredible and it's happening. | But this year, says McCauley: "I've seen people awakened by the scale of these public events. Our city centre has for years been made of dark, dangerous streets; people had become conditioned into being frightened. But now those streets were full. I saw my city with different eyes and thought: this is incredible and it's happening. |
| "People talk about economic revitalisation, but there was a bigger thing, something left in the air that could not be planned until it actually happened. Something that did take us back to before the Troubles when this was a great place to be, for all the hardship. It's been some process that deals with the hurt and turns towards something positive." | "People talk about economic revitalisation, but there was a bigger thing, something left in the air that could not be planned until it actually happened. Something that did take us back to before the Troubles when this was a great place to be, for all the hardship. It's been some process that deals with the hurt and turns towards something positive." |
| The executive producer of the film was the Bafta award-winning Andrew Eaton, who left his native Derry soon after his father's death, aged 16, but "returned many times and for many reasons: family, work, stuff for Marty". Back as recently as five years ago, he says: "I found it utterly depressing, fallen off the edge, even though the war was over. The city had even lost the cachet of being on the news every night." | |
| This time, Eaton was back to speak at an event with the widow of journalist Daniel Pearl, executed by the Taliban, about whom he had made the film A Mighty Heart. "Also," he says, "to reacquaint myself with my home town with my three daughters. It's been my good fortune to work with Seamus Heaney, who always emphasised this sense of place, and I came to try and close some kind of circle." | This time, Eaton was back to speak at an event with the widow of journalist Daniel Pearl, executed by the Taliban, about whom he had made the film A Mighty Heart. "Also," he says, "to reacquaint myself with my home town with my three daughters. It's been my good fortune to work with Seamus Heaney, who always emphasised this sense of place, and I came to try and close some kind of circle." |
| This return was like Derry's anthem The Town I Loved So Well, but with the ending changed: "We went to the house I grew up in and I could feel those wounds healing for the first time. I went to the barracks the army used as its base for Bloody Sunday, now a venue for all those events – what a feeling. My mother had served there as a Wren [the Women's Royal Naval Service], and my dad came to pick her up at the gate for their first date. I felt I was getting my home town back." | This return was like Derry's anthem The Town I Loved So Well, but with the ending changed: "We went to the house I grew up in and I could feel those wounds healing for the first time. I went to the barracks the army used as its base for Bloody Sunday, now a venue for all those events – what a feeling. My mother had served there as a Wren [the Women's Royal Naval Service], and my dad came to pick her up at the gate for their first date. I felt I was getting my home town back." |
| There is no pretence, however, that Derry has this year suddenly agreed to share its divided history. Along with Eaton, I was invited to a gathering last month organised by cultural hub the Nerve Centre, at which committed teachers discussed their work. After speaking at the year's opening during the Other Voices festival, I was back for an event towards its close that set the agenda for what Martin Melarkey insists must be the city of culture's legacy. "The legacy must live on in the schools above all," he says. "I was at school with Ray McCartney's brother when he was on hunger strike. And it was as though this wasn't happening. We won't talk about it because it's not on the curriculum, although a hunger striker's brother is sitting here in class. We need to make sure that attitude never pervades our school system again." | There is no pretence, however, that Derry has this year suddenly agreed to share its divided history. Along with Eaton, I was invited to a gathering last month organised by cultural hub the Nerve Centre, at which committed teachers discussed their work. After speaking at the year's opening during the Other Voices festival, I was back for an event towards its close that set the agenda for what Martin Melarkey insists must be the city of culture's legacy. "The legacy must live on in the schools above all," he says. "I was at school with Ray McCartney's brother when he was on hunger strike. And it was as though this wasn't happening. We won't talk about it because it's not on the curriculum, although a hunger striker's brother is sitting here in class. We need to make sure that attitude never pervades our school system again." |
| Greengrass visited the Nerve Centre's digital workshop, where he found talented enthusiasm for his own craft, infused by the recent past, but neither in denial of, nor dependent upon it. "So many of the photographic exhibitions and films showing in town reflected the Troubles back at all of us," he says. "News reports, documentaries and photographs that have embedded those images of the city among young people. As a result, there's a huge amount of interest in the art of film. It was striking – all these young people are manipulating images and playing with sound in a very sophisticated way. | Greengrass visited the Nerve Centre's digital workshop, where he found talented enthusiasm for his own craft, infused by the recent past, but neither in denial of, nor dependent upon it. "So many of the photographic exhibitions and films showing in town reflected the Troubles back at all of us," he says. "News reports, documentaries and photographs that have embedded those images of the city among young people. As a result, there's a huge amount of interest in the art of film. It was striking – all these young people are manipulating images and playing with sound in a very sophisticated way. |
| "Derry's problems, apart from the obvious, have been geographical," concludes Greengrass. "At the edge of the kingdom and the edge of Ireland. Once the shirt factories had gone, economic isolation was part of that remoteness, so that not long ago it was hard to say to a young person in Derry, 'You should stay'. I know it's easy to be optimistic from the outside, but there's a chance now you'd win the argument and persuade them to remain." | "Derry's problems, apart from the obvious, have been geographical," concludes Greengrass. "At the edge of the kingdom and the edge of Ireland. Once the shirt factories had gone, economic isolation was part of that remoteness, so that not long ago it was hard to say to a young person in Derry, 'You should stay'. I know it's easy to be optimistic from the outside, but there's a chance now you'd win the argument and persuade them to remain." |
| "We're post-conflict people," says Bronagh Gallagher. "Some communities remain steeped only in the debris of tribalism, and a legacy for the city of culture must mean a new understanding of Northern Ireland beyond tribalism." | "We're post-conflict people," says Bronagh Gallagher. "Some communities remain steeped only in the debris of tribalism, and a legacy for the city of culture must mean a new understanding of Northern Ireland beyond tribalism." |
| She rails against British army recruitment drives around Protestant schools in poor areas, "trying to appeal to the old identity of a lost tribe – the Protestant working class that was never represented but by British interests that have now abandoned them. What they offer to the youth is, 'Be a hero!' says the army. But we've had enough of what they call a hero and who they call a terrorist here. | She rails against British army recruitment drives around Protestant schools in poor areas, "trying to appeal to the old identity of a lost tribe – the Protestant working class that was never represented but by British interests that have now abandoned them. What they offer to the youth is, 'Be a hero!' says the army. But we've had enough of what they call a hero and who they call a terrorist here. |
| "Any man can send another man to war and I know it's complicated and stuff, but I'm sick of cowards in government. It takes brave people to change a hurt place like this – where some people will never have peace, where there's pain in every home – and it has to be done. Derry," she concludes, "has now seen beyond the war. Think of Derry as a child with a new voice. A place of thousands of nests with wee eggs about to hatch." | "Any man can send another man to war and I know it's complicated and stuff, but I'm sick of cowards in government. It takes brave people to change a hurt place like this – where some people will never have peace, where there's pain in every home – and it has to be done. Derry," she concludes, "has now seen beyond the war. Think of Derry as a child with a new voice. A place of thousands of nests with wee eggs about to hatch." |
| At the end of the film, Gerry Anderson notes: "Now I see a people with positivity and energy in their hearts. I hope they're right." | |
| • This article was amended on 30 December 2013 to correctly identify Mark McCauley as a cameraman | |
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