WoW and the Liverpool Irish Festival

Life has been particularly busy for Writing on the Wall during October. As well as our annual creative meeting, where we invite writers, community workers, activists and professionals to a meeting designed to set the agenda for our May 2014 festival, we have also delivered a number of other events, including the latest iteration of our What’s Your Story’ project and a special event for Black History month.

Two Writing on the Wall events that I attended had a particularly Irish flavour, appropriate as one of them was an event run in partnership with the unique Liverpool Irish Festival. This event, with Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh, focussed on Feargal’s original research examining the revival of the Irish language, and the particular role of political prisoners in speaking the language and teaching it within their communities upon release from jail. The event was chaired by Prof Phil Scraton (Queens University Belfast), a long-standing supporter of Writing on the Wall. Phil’s extended introduction placed Feargal’s work within a continuum of research on prisons, where ‘academic activists’ speak ‘truth to power’ and give voice to the powerless. The packed Bluecoat audience sat in stunned silence as Phil read testimonies from jailed women and children, concerning the horrific conditions in which they are held in prison in Northern Ireland. The fact that some of these prisoners took their lives shortly after writing their impassioned letters heightened the emotion in the room. These letters and testimonies are taken from Phil’s forthcoming book entitled The Incarceration of Women: Punishing Bodies, Breaking Spirits. Phil was a hard act to follow, but the breadth and depth of Feargal’s work saw him receive generous applause from a rapt audience. In particular, the audience clearly appreciated Feargal’s ‘insider’ perspective on the Irish language, and understood that this was a voice that had not been heard before, telling a story that had not been told before.

The other event I attended was the launch of a book by Bill Rolston, Director of the Transitional Justice Institute at the University of Ulster. Bill’s book is the fourth and latest edition in a series entitled Drawing Support. These books focus on the political wall murals in the North of Ireland, and Bill’s illustrated presentation gave attendees access to his unrivalled archive of over 2,000 images. Bill’s photos, taken in the 30+ years since the popularisation of Republican murals in the aftermath of the death of 10 hunger strikers in the Maze Prison in 1981, tell their own story, but Bill explored and explained their centrality to the visual culture of Northern Ireland. Treading a delicate path in exploring themes within both Loyalist and Republican murals, Bill did not flinch from criticising the politics found within certain specific murals, whilst also exploring the muralists’ creative achievements in developing a body of work that is now one of the leading tourist attractions in Belfast.

 WoW Trustee 
Stuart Borthwick