This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Ulster Workers Strike, which I wrote about a few months ago. Now the Ulster Museum has launched a new oral history project about the strike on its website, as part of its ‘Troubles and Beyond’ programme.
There will undoubtedly be a lot written about the Ulster Workers’ strike this year, as we mark its fiftieth anniversary. I was interested in looking at it from a civilian perspective, because that’s what we do at DC Tours. [...]
Donzo recently made a video with Irish travel website Ireland Before You Die about the history of Belfast’s famous Europa Hotel. Watch his three minute potted history and then dive a little deeper with a BBC archive report from the 1970s and an in-depth documentary by Al-Jazeera.
We are delighted to have been approved for membership of the Conflict and Legacy Interpretive Network, a group of museums and heritage organisations who are working together to look at how best to collect, interpret and share conflict history.
If you have any interest in Belfast architecture you will have heard of Sir Charles Brett (1928-2005), whether as the author C.E.B. Brett, or Charlie Brett. He was a fascinating figure, a solicitor who was variously a politician, historian, artist, journalist, writer and conservationist.
The only public memorial to victims of the troubles in Belfast was defaced by graffiti last year. After six months nothing had been done to restore it, so we cleaned it up ourselves.
You'll often hear Belfast’s Europa Hotel described as “Europe’s most bombed hotel”, but if anywhere deserves to hold that dubious honour it’s actually the Sarajevo Holiday Inn.
In April we participated in a week-long international arts and cultural programme hosted by the British Council Northern Ireland called Peace and Beyond 2023: The Role of Arts in Divided and Polarised Societies to mark the 25th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
How we ended up in a segment on MSNBC's Morning Joe, along with Bob Geldof, Malachi O'Doherty and a Belfast punk outfit called Gender Chores!
Belfast artist Colin Davidson's exhibition 'Silent Testimony' is on show at the Long Gallery in Stormont until the 30th of April, so we took the opportunity to revisit this powerful series of paintings.
We were recently approached by BBC Newsline's Sara Girvin with a great idea she had for a feature on the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. She wanted to take a group of young people from the "Peace Generation" (born after the agreement was signed in 1998) on a trip across Belfast to find out how they felt about the changes that have taken place in Belfast over the last 25 years.
Something I am eternally grateful for is that family was never physically harmed as a result of the Troubles. However, whilst we didn’t lose a loved one to the men of violence, it certainly touched our lives.