Alan in Belfast

A journey in reconciliation: an exploration of the friendship of CS Lewis with JRR Tolkien (Monday 20 May at 7.30pm)

2013-05-18T17:05:00.001+01:00

As part of Community Relations Week, Contemporary Christianity are hosting a talk by Rev Mercia Malcolm - a Church of Ireland vicar in Carnmoney - exploring the friendship of two of the Inklings, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien.

As a fourth or fifth former, I remember re-reading Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien in order that I could be interviewed in character as Tolkien as part of an exercise in Mr Duffy's English class.

Tolkien was a devout Catholic and his faith was significant in Lewis' conversion to Christianity and the Church of England. Lewis described the friendship between the two writers as one which

"marked the breakdown of two old prejudices."

Find out more on Monday evening (20 May) at 7.30pm up on the third floor of 21 Ormeau Avanue, Belfast, BT2 8HD (just past the BBC). There's always tea and coffee and a warm welcome. The talk will be followed by questions and discussion.

2013 is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Belfast-born author. CS Lewis Tours run every Sunday afternoon from June to September, leaving the front of the Linen Hall Library at 2pm.

Do you switch off at funerals? (40% don't power off their mobile) Do you tweet? (3% have)

2013-05-15T08:00:00.000+01:00

I can *exclusively reveal that a survey of two thousand funeral attendees found that 3% had used social media (Facebook or Twitter) at a funeral, and 4% thought it was acceptable to use social media to describe what was taking place at a funeral. [* It’s ok, I washed my mouth out with soap after typing the tabloid E word.]

Eamonn Mallie – I’m looking at you! While your funeral tweeting has been scoffed at in the past, and is often the subject of debate at tweet-ups and seminars, 4% of folk are with you!

In fact, of those surveyed across the UK, one in six had used their phone during a funeral.

I used to tell folk that I only switched my phone off for funerals and flights. Increasingly that’s not true.

On a plane, the phone just goes into flight mode rather than being fully powered off. (Bluetooth is allowed on most airlines once the seatbelt lights have been extinguished.)

Funerals had become another situation when the phone was simply slipped onto silent.

A couple of years ago, I silenced my phone as I got out of the car and headed into an East Belfast church to attend a funeral. I remember doing it as I’d paused when a colleague walked past the car and told him that I was fixing my phone before going any further.

Somewhere in the middle of the tribute I felt a vibration in the chest pocket of my jacket. The vibration that comes a second before the ringer goes off. For that second I was calm. Only I would notice the vibration. And I could slip my hand into the pocket and hit the button to reject the call.

What happened next caused my heartbeat to race and no doubt my neck to go red. bRing! bRing! Whaaaa … I’d taken precautions. I’d set it to silent! How could it be ringing? It takes a lot longer to reach into your pocket to switch off a noisy phone that one that’s simply vibrating.

The ground didn’t open up and swallow me. A lightning bolt didn’t crash through the roof of the church and strike me down. Though I half expect to be held to account for the incident at the pearly gates!

Later on when I was thinking straight again, I realised that my phone had already been on silent earlier that morning. So I’d actually un-silenced it getting out of the car. And I hadn’t looked down at the screen to check. Holding in the ‘C’ button had been enough every other time.

For a while after that I switched my phone off at funerals. But more recently I’ve lapsed back to silencing it … though I nearly always visually check it is muted nowadays.

As well as being purveyors of food and banking, The Co-operative Group run hundreds of funeral homes across the UK, including 19 local ones under the banner of Funeral Services Northern Ireland. The survey I referred to early was commissioned by the Co-Op and the two thousand adult funeral attendees were cornered at some of their funeral homes across the UK.

I suspect we’ll be reading a lot about the results of the survey in this morning’s papers and hearing the issues discussed on the radio. Like the regular Travelodge surveys – the ones that reveal a third of British adults share their bed with a teddy bear – the funeral industry’s mobile survey is very accessible and easily conveyed, with a sprinkling of advertising thrown in for good measure!

Some more statistics (non-exclusive ones this time!):

70% of people thought that it was unacceptable to use your mobile phone at a funeral. That’s higher than while driving (55%), at a wedding (41%), on a train (18%) or on a plane (18%).
Yet 40% of those polled said they wouldn’t turn their mobile off at a funeral: 30% would put their phone on silent; 10% would refuse to even turn the sound down. (It’s not quite clear from the press release whether that’s 30% of the 40% (ie, 12% of total polled) that put their phone on silent; or whether the 40% = 30% silent + 10% sound still up.)

Beverley Brown – General Manager of Funeral Services Northern Ireland –talked about the hypocrisy of the public position:

“We are witnessing a cultural shift in society’s stance on funeral etiquette. Although people universally despise the use of mobile phones at funerals, many exercise double standards by frowning upon the use of mobiles by others when they are unwilling to turn the sound down or turn their own phone off.

As people become ever more time-pressed and ever more welded to their phones, the use of mobiles has become commonplace at events which would have been considered unthinkable only a few years ago, and none more so than at a funeral.”

Sentiment shared exactly by David Collingwood, operations director of Co-operative Funeralcare in the Guardian. Great minds think alike - that's how it works with regionalised press releases!

But if our phones were off, then we couldn’t take calls, tweet, read emails ... or film the service.

Over one in four people in Northern Ireland talk [on the phone] during funerals, in the north of England over one in 10 admitted to leaving their phone on by mistake while Londoners and those from the South East were the most likely to make a call. One in 40 East Midlanders have filmed a funeral on a mobile phone!

I can’t find any quantitative stats but there is anecdotal evidence that some people are being buried with their mobile phones … occasionally in mobile-phone shaped caskets!

It does make me stop and think. The only place I’m truly offline and out of touch with the world is while on a long haul flight.

Being constantly “on the grid” is certainly normal, but can it also be healthy? Well connected but perhaps constantly distracted?

It's a subject that digital researcher Aleks Krotoski tackles in two recent episodes of The Digital Human on Radio 4: Isolation (listen to the last 7 minutes) and Detox (covers solitude). [available as podcasts]

Statistics and neat infographics from FSNI/Co-Op

Snags continue to hit the News Letter; while two regional dailies run identical features in their women’s section

2013-05-06T20:13:00.000+01:00

I had a leisurely read today through a couple of this morning’s papers and a number of oddities jumped off the pages. While verging on petty, the snags and snafus do point to the lack of subeditors at the News Letter and the pressure on the remaining Johnston Press staff who recently switched to use a new template-based approach that imposes limits on story length and page layout.

Both the Irish News and the News Letter use the same old photo of Keira Knightly in a bridesmaid dress at a friend’s wedding in 2011.

Unfortunately, the News Letter label the picture as “Actress Keira knightly arrives for her wedding”. [Other than sharing the same image, the News Letter online article for this story is completely different from the published one!] The Daily Mail is pretty sure she wore a white dress at her own wedding!

Both papers cover Friday evening’s statement from the Archbishop of Armagh in reaction to Archdeacon Leslie Stevenson’s last minute decision to decline appointment as Bishop of Meath & Kildare. Referring to the three bishops who had visited Leslie Stevenson “in an individual capacity to offer pastoral support” the day before he declined the appointment (which was first announced in February), the News Letter piece finishes with the odd sentence:

Archbishop of Dublin Dr Michael Jackson said the bishops “were they seeking to revoke the decision of the House of Bishops”.

Whatever that means? [Corrected in the online version of the article.] The full sentence from the Archbishop of Dublin that was being quoted said:

The bishops were not representing the House of Bishops, nor were they seeking to revoke the decision of the House of Bishops who had previously confirmed his election to the bishopric of Meath & Kildare in good faith.

My eye was caught by the same white and blue patterned clothes in the women’s section of both the Irish News and the News Letter [also online]. Feature writer Lisa Haynes struck gold - twice - with her content being picked up by both regional papers today. While the two articles differently edit Lisa's original material and photos, both pieces start with same common sense sentence:

With each fashion season there are mainstream looks, and then there are niche trends.

Not for the first time, the Letters to the Editor page in the News Letter seems unsure of the newspaper’s proper Portadown address.

The bottom left hand corner of the page suggests it is “Cam Industrial Area”.

In a paragraph immediately below it becomes plain “Carn”.

And over in the bottom right hand corner it is more correctly listed as “Carn Industrial Area”.

Let’s not even start commenting on the wide variation of byline styles still being used across different articles in the relaunched News Letter.

Questions remain about the effect of recent changes at the News Letter on staff morale, its inability to include late-breaking stories given the inflexibility of the new templates, and whether the concentration on online video will pay off for the paper's website and tablet edition.

I understand that Johnston Press are once again looking for further redundancies, and in the last few weeks the NUJ have raised the issues of defamation/libel (writing a balanced article that sums up two sides of a court case in 200-250 words is very difficult) as well as occupational stress with local JP management.

While Johnson Press' managing director in Ireland agreed to be interviewed last August/September, a date was never set and she hasn't responded to my most recent email trying to arrange something to mark the paper's relaunch.

Innovation, business and culture at the EBN Congress in Derry (29-31 May)

2013-05-05T09:30:00.000+01:00

Derry’s stint as UK City of Culture for 2013 is bringing all kinds of events and conferences to the city. At the end of May, a business and innovation conference with a technological and cultural will take over the Millennium Forum.

The EBN Congress will bring together European business and innovation centres, incubators, businesses and entrepreneurs. This year’s congress is being organised by NORIBIC, the Northern Ireland Business Innovation Centre.

The line-up of local and international speakers and contributors is impressive:

Steve Wozniak is best known for co-founding Apple Computer Inc along with Steve Jobs. He’s also a philanthropist and founding sponsor of technology and children’s discovery museums as well as an initial funder of the campaigning Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Richard Florida is described as an “urbanist” and wrote The Rise of the Creative Class, a book whose concepts Derry academic Paul Moore rubbished in his 2011 TEDxBelfast talk.

Tim Smit co-founded the Eden Project where he is still co-chief executive. The project has contributed over £1 billion into the Cornish economy. Long before that he worked as a composer and producer of both rock music and opera.

Michael Gorman is founding director of Dublin’s Science Gallery and has a passion for exciting people about the “creative collisions between art and science”. The Science Gallery was described at last year’s TEDxBelfast as having “no entrance fee and a decent café in which you can meet scientists and artists, their exhibitions go beyond simple childish scientific displays and offer an insight into real science”.

And that’s before you list the experts in economics, semiconductors, sustainability, the University of Ulster’s Director of Innovation Tim Brundle and director of Derry’s CultureTECH festival Mark Nagurski and lots, lots more. It’s good to see that the list of speakers is not all male. Themed villages will focus on culture, digital, social and internation opportunities for networking.

The full programme stretches over three days from 29 to 31 May. Local delegates can take advantage of heavily discounted tickets. (The main EBN Congress site handles bookings from further afield.)

Hopefully I’ll be there on the middle day and will post about the atmosphere and some of the content being shared. In the meantime, local creative firm Uproar Comics have produced a light-hearted guide to the congress.

14th Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival (2-12 May 2013) - the IMF, time portals, music and death

2013-04-30T22:35:00.001+01:00

A quick look at some events that are running as part of the 14th Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival which starts this week.

Friday 3 May

Abie Philbin Bowman: The IMF vs Jedward // 8pm in The Dark Horse // Another year and another promising show from the Irish comic who brought us Jesus: The Guantanamo Years and Pope Benedict: Bond Villain. He has a radical plan to save his country: “Ireland should get Jedward to renegotiate our bailout from the EU and IMF. After half an hour with Jedward, the IMF will give us whatever we want. After half an hour with Jedward, Bono and Bob Geldof, Ireland will own Germany.” £5.

Saturday 4 May

Sylvia’s Quest // Leaves The MAC at 3pm and 6pm // Follow Sylvia through “her labyrinth of secret streets and time portals” listening in to “the sounds, voices and worlds which only Sylvia can usually hear’ on the provided headphones as she tries to find her way home. £7. Dress for the weather. Also on Sunday 5 May.

Sunday 5 May

Bernadette Morris // 7pm in The John Hewitt // Having been captivated by her at Out to Lunch 2012, it’s brilliant to see Bernadette Morris at CQAF launching her debut album All the Ways you Wander. £4

Tuesday 6 May

St Anne’s: Full Circle // 6pm and 7pm in Writer’s Square // A 22 minute documentarion filmed and edited by Peter Adam about the rise and fall of the original St Anne’s plaza, told through the eyes of the skateboarders. £2.

Wednesday 8 May

Seo Robert – The Search for Robert McAdam // 8pm in The Baby Grand // a bilingual show (with Irish sections repeated in English) looking a cross-cultural nineteenth century northern Presbyterian Robert Shipboy McAdam. “McAdam was involved in setting up a library, a harp society, a museum and a literary society, he designed and mended steam turbines, made the windows for the Pasha’s Palace in Cairo and still found time to compose music and amass one of the largest collections of Irish cultural treasures on the island. A fascinating insight into one of Belfast’s most eminent Victorians.” £9.50 and £12.50.

Sean Hughes: Life Becomes Noises // 8pm, Downstairs at The MAC // Having sold out at January’s Out to Lunch festival, Sean Hughes is back with his one man show about aging and dying, poignant yet light hearted as he reflects on the death of his father. £10.

Thursday 9 May

Mark Thomas: Bravo Figaro // 8pm, Downstairs at The MAC // Another father and son tale from another comic. This time it’s Mark Thomas bringing opera to his bed-ridden Methodist-Thatcherite father in his Bournemouth bungalow. £10.

The QUBe Myth-Science Space Arkestra perform the music of Sun Ra // 9pm in The MAC Upstairs // Easily the strangest-titled gig at CQAF this year. QUBe are a 16-piece Belfast group of improvisers and experimental musician. Hip hop, New Orleans’ brass, lower east side experimentalism, electronica and noise; custom made costumes, unusual instruments, dancing, and unexpected surprises. £6.

Sunday 12 May

Bronagh Gallagher // 3pm in The Black Box // Bronagh. Soul. Sunday afternoon. Book. Tickets. Now. £12

If you’re in The Black Box for an event, check out Helena Hamilton’s dizzying monochrome installation in the toilets.

Also check out the Open Source #OSBelfast programme running in 25 Lower Donegall Street (building to the left of Belfast Exposed/Northern Visions) during the CQAF festival. Lots of events, workshops and performances already scheduled in to their timetable. And you can even suggest and run your own.

The History of the Troubles accordin’ to my Da with Conor Grimes, Ivan Little and Alan McKee is running (again!) in the Grand Opera House from Tuesday 7–Saturday 11 May. The play was originally commissioned ten years ago by CQAF.

Bruiser make a feel good song and dance with their Spelling Bee in the MAC (until 4 May)

2013-04-19T10:29:00.002+01:00

My spelling is getting worse. Auto-correct means that I no longer even see half the red wiggly lines that should appear under my misspelt sentences. However, spelling bee participants are in a whole different league of enriched word power.

The adult actors from local Bruiser Theatre Company in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee are totally convincing as the younger characters they are playing. The minimal set – a gymnasium – has a quirky built-in emphasised perspective.

“All the children you see on stage are here because of their love of words.”

The children sitting on the benches include a few familiar faces – volunteers, don’t panic! – from the audience. The audience participation is free from humiliation and they're made into stars of the show. Based on last night’s performance, Basil McCrea may have a career in the Countdown dictionary corner if politics gets the better of him!

If you haven’t been to a spelling bee before you’ll soon pick up the pattern of each child stepping up the mic while a fascinating fact about them is read out. A word is announced and before spelling it out the contestant is allowed to ask for the word’s language of origin, its definition or for it to be used in a sentence (rarely useful, often sarcastic, and always funny). If you get a letter wrong, the bell is rung and your time in the competition is up.

“Words in the dictionary are the friends I shall have forever, more than the friends I have in school”

The characters have impossible names but very believable pubescent issues. The bee progresses, and through flashbacks and bursting into song the audience get to know the contestants and examine their vulnerabilities as the children, one by one, exit the competition.

There’s an energy to the cast and the musical score that carries right through the show. While there aren’t any Webber/Rice tunes that you’ll hum on the way home, some of the songs stand out and they’re certainly sung with gusto by the relatively small cast. At times some of the lyrics were lost in the noise, but the emotion was still understood. The live band sits up behind the stage and benefits from an enormous percussion section.

The show keeps the cast on its toes with plenty of opportunity for improvisation and ad-libbing around the volunteer contributions. Director Lisa May describes being attracted to this “danger” in the script. It means it’ll be a slightly different show every night and the cast won’t be able to just go through the motions.

In the end, Spelling Bee is less about words and music, and more about people dealing with their insecurities, coping with competition and expectations, finding friendship and acceptance, and learning to make good choices and live well.

It’s unashamedly feel good, a little schmaltzy, very funny, and at the end of a busy Thursday it made me smile from beginning to end. And now I know what a sermuncle is!

“There's no such thing as a sermuncle.”

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee runs at the MAC until 4 May. Well worth going to see. I'll be back to see what Bruiser get up to next.

What is This Film Called Love (Mark Cousins) at Belfast Film Festival

2013-04-16T00:35:00.000+01:00

Stuck in Mexico City for an unexpected three day layover while promoting his epic fifteen hour documentary The Story of Film, filmmaker Mark Cousins decided – in the middle of a press-up – to go out and make a film.

He took with him the laminated photograph of Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein. Walking fifteen or so miles a day, he pounded the pavements of the bustling city like a melancholic flâneur, exploring it with Sergei, and filming only using his pocket Flip camera.

I talked to Mark after the tonight’s screening at the Belfast Film Festival, appropriately filming him using a Flip camera (for the second time) to find out how his limited equipment had influenced his ad hoc film.

A male and a female voice talk over the shaky pictures taken by Mark as he marches all around the city. Sometimes he’ll stop for a rest and a drink. Sometimes the camera will rest on some facet of nature and stare for a minute or two.

With a fixed wide angle lens, a short battery life and only a built in mic, the Flip camera is limited to just two kinds of shots – wobbly and stable – depending on whether a tripod was used.

The voiceovers are fabulously detailed, referencing poetry and history as well as musing on the meaning of ecstasy. While the slow pace of the film grated at the start, I relaxed into the easy going, free-flowing narrative and warmed to the peculiar plot-less tale.

What is This Film Called Love has flashbacks galore – and flashbacks within flashbacks – along with dreams and at least three twists in the last ten minutes of the film.

Shot in three days without a thought-out plan, and edited in just nine days, the 77 minute film is a remarkable example of what you can achieve if you give a creative mind a camera and the space to think. Film buffs will love the auditory and visual references to classic movies and soundtracks. You can read more about the editing process on the film’s website and read through the storyboard that Mark crafted and (re)sorted on A6 index cards.

Sitting in the soft QFT seats watching Mark and Sergei take a gander around Mexico City, I remembered a weekend in September when I spent long periods walking through Boston city centre and over the bridge to Cambridge to wander around MIT. Fond memories of being solitary in a city, of having time to think and read and watch. Memories shattered as I returned home from the QFT to hear the news of explosions and the unfolding tragedy at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in a city I grew to love so quickly.

Extra DAB radio stations coming to Northern Ireland - Digital One licence extended

2013-04-13T12:08:00.000+01:00

Provision of DAB radio in Northern Ireland has been weak since its inception.

When originally set up, DAB radio had two national multiplexes (bundles) of radio stations (one with BBC stations, the other commercial) that were transmitted all across the UK, supplemented with local commercial multiplexes.

Due to frequency constraints – avoiding interference with frequencies already crowded with FM stations in the north and south – the national commercial multiplex was not licenced to operate in Northern Ireland, leaving us short of digital channels and making the DAB radio proposition considerably weaker, demonstrated by low public awareness of DAB in surveys.

A frequency – DAB channel 11D – has become free that will allow an additional multiplex to transmit across Northern Ireland, and the UK's national commercial operator Digital One has applied to extend into Northern Ireland.

Ofcom consulted during a four week window during February and March, and I read in the Irish News this week that Ofcom had approved Digital One’s licence extension to Northern Ireland, and an additional six transmitters (Divis, Carnmoney Hill, Londonderry, Brougher Mountain, Strabane and Limavady) will start to be built this year.

Existing BBC national multiplex: Asian network, Radio 1, 1Xtra, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, 4 extra, Radio 5 Live, 5 Live Sports Extra, 6 music, Asian network, World Service
Existing local commercial multiplex, operated by Bauer Digital Radio: Citybeat, Classic FM, Cool FM, Downtown Radio, Heat, Kiss, Q102.9, TalkSport, UCB UK + BBC Radio Ulster*

* Since the BBC national multiplexes transmit on the same frequency right across the UK, the channels on each have to be identical. So local BBC stations like Radio Ulster are carried on local commercial multiplexes. Since different multiplexes use different transmitter sites, this explains why DAB coverage for Radio Ulster and Radio 5live are not identical in Northern Ireland.

You can check your predicted DAB coverage on the Get Digital Radio website.

The Digital One Network being extended to NI carries Smooth, Smooth 70s, Classic FM, Planet Rock, BFBS (GB rather than the NI station already on FM), TalkSport, Premier, UCB UK, Jazz FM, Absolute, Absolute 80s, Absolute 90s.

There is some overlap – Classic FM and UCB UK – between the Digital One national commercial multiplex and the existing Bauer local commercial multiplex. There is also an anomaly that local station U105 has so far avoided the expense of entering the local DAB market, even though another UTV-branded company operates DAB multiplexes in England.

Also worth noting that other than a novel technical experiment a couple of years ago, BBC Radio Foyle is not available on DAB, even from the transmitters in the north west.

The Irish News quotes Ofcom’s head of digital radio Neil Stock:

“This move puts Northern Ireland on a par with the rest of the United Kingdom, giving radio listeners the opportunity to tune in to a far greater number of services.”

Digital One predicts its new services will include indoor coverage for 74% of households and 70% of the road network (suspect that's 70% of motorway and primary A roads).

An older coverage map from Arqiva (who run the transmitters) was included in one of Digital One’s proposal documents.

There were relatively few responses to Ofcom's consultation, but nearly all were in favour of Digital One's extension to NI:

I think all DAB services should be extended as soon as possible to Northern Ireland.
I beleive that if Ofcom did not grant a licence toDigital One it would be tatamount to Racial diacrimanation [sic]
It is simply unfair that we in Armagh and the wider population of NI are not able to receive the range of digital stations that, not only GB residents, but those in Belfast can. May I add that it would surely be unthinkable for any other Government agency to suggest that many people are able to avail of the services already available to those who happen to live in major centres of population. It would be inaccurate to refer to a postcode lottery, since a lottery is chance, whereas digital radio coverage has been specifically planned and implemented to exclude hundreds of thousands of eagerly would- be listeners. Can we in Armagh and other areas please have equality of coverage?

Forked.ie launches new blog to look at the Norn Iron food and drink industry

2013-04-04T22:44:00.000+01:00

Great to see the launch of a new blog - Forked.ie - in Belfast tonight. A blog with branded bags and badges ... as well as an appetite for news and views about food on the island of Ireland.

The badges were the tell-tale sign that Manuel the Waiter was one of the four resident foodies behind the new venture which merges the talent of Belfast Bites (Laura Clatworthy), Food Belfast (John Ferris), Well Done Fillet (MtD), a cocktail evangelist (Conor Brady) and the Mystery Chef (the 'mystery' being another sign that MtD is involved).

Expect bar and restaurant reviews, interviews and gossip with local hospitality industry types, and the mad musings and mutterings of those who make the food and serve it.

Hosted in Ox Belfast (recently opened at 1 Oxford Street, just up from the Laganside Courts), the launch packed out the upstairs with screeching eaters, drinkers, owners as well as old and new media folk. The screeching was real: like a rock concert, my ears hurt as I headed back down the street to get my car.

Forked.ie has already got off to a great start with a scoop on the closure of the Cayenne restaurant in an interview John Ferris conducted with "the two godfathers of modern Northern-Irish cuisine" Paul Rankin and Michael Deane.

Looking forward to what they serve up in the weeks and months to come.

A Little History of the World (E. H. Gombrich)

2013-04-02T13:24:00.000+01:00

With only three years of history at school, my knowledge jumps from Neolithic man to the Roundheads, Cavaliers and Cromwell, and finishes with Franz Ferdinand and the First World War. While my daughter went through a period of devouring Horrible Histories books, I struggled with their mashup of manufactured monstrosity and reality.

A Little History of the World was written by Ernst Gombrich and first published in German in 1936. The two hundred and eighty page book blasts through world history at a breakneck speed. Each chapter looks at a period or a character. The prose is anything but staid, launching into minor digressions and asking the reader questions throughout the chatty and energetic text.

Egypt, Babylon, an Athenian called Draco (from which we get the word “Draconian”), China, Muhammad, Charlemagne, knights, Popes, Columbus, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther, Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon, Karl Marx, Abraham Lincoln, and lots, lots more. Gombrich also records the industrial and technological advances throughout the ages, while noting the social and political upheaval they cause.

Given the broad sweeps of history being covered – the First World War is fitted into four pages – lots of periods and places are left out. The book is unsurprisingly light on Irish history, and local readers will discover that 1690 is not remembered for the Battle of the Boyne! There is relatively little on Africa, hardly anything about South America, and the far eastern references are paltry.

Gombrich was an art historian by trade – better known for writing The Story of Art than his children’s history of the world – and moved from Vienna to London in 1936. He worked for BBC Monitoring Service, translating German radio broadcasts during the Second World War, before going back to academic life. Becoming a British citizen in 1947, he received a CBE in 1966 and was knighted in 1972.

The original manuscript was supplemented with new material when an English translation was first published in 2005, four years after Gombrich’s death. In particular, the author added a final chapter to reflect on “the history of the world which I have lived through myself”. He talks about the war from both the perspective of his adopted country as well as that of his place of birth.

One can be attached to one’s own country without needing to insist that the rest of the world’s inhabitants are worthless. But as more and more people were taken in by this sort of nonsense, the menace to peace grew greater.

For a non-historian, Gombrich’s history is accessible and a very easy book to read. It’s refreshingly not centred around the British empire and looks at Europe as a whole. For anyone wanting to revise their history and fill in a few gaps, I’d recommend a copy of this book. While originally written as a children’s book – and is certainly simple enough for good readers from aged 10 upwards, or suitable to be read to children as a series of bedtime stories – it also works well with adults!

As part of this year’s World Book Night activities on 23 April, I’ll be giving away copies of A Little History of the World.

The Avengers - a movie that shouldn't have been made

2013-03-31T22:10:00.003+01:00

If there’s a list of films that shouldn’t have been made, then The Avengers should be near the top.

No, not the Marvel comic characters who escaped onto the silver screen. But the “spy-fi” series from the 1960s and 1970s television series, that was reinvented for a woeful, sequel with new actors in 1998.

The original six series (four in black and white) of The Avengers starred Patrick Macnee as agent John Steed with his trademark bowler hat alongside companions Cathy Gale (played by Honor Blackman) and Emma Peel (Diana Rigg). And then after a break of seven years, another two series were filmed, this time called The New Avengers, starring Joanna Lumley playing Purdey and Gareth Hunt as Mike Gambit alongside a more portly and less athletic Steed.

The quality of the TV episode plots was admittedly variable. Sometimes brilliantly surreal, with frequent references to enormous-scale game-playing and secret organisations. Other times, lapsing into tedious car chases. But on balance, a good series.

BBC Four aired Series 4-6 of The Avengers. And in recent years, BBC Four and ITV4 have repeated The New Avengers episodes, though ITV4 inexplicably showed the majority of them out of sequence.

But the 1998 film – starring Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, Sean Connery and Eddie Izzard, and directed by Jeremiah Chechik – is a disaster.

While containing some futuristic technology and gadgets, the film is beautifully ambiguous about its period, with a black and white palette occasionally punctuated by bright splashes of colour like the red phone box.

The Avengers film includes many elements of the television series: high performance cars, Steed’s hat and umbrella, surreal moments like a meeting full of men disguised in different coloured fluffy teddybear costumes, and lots of tea. But it fails to pull off the quintessentially British feeling required. The humour isn’t funny. The action sequences should have kicked off a whole new martial art based around fighting with an umbrella. And the plot is more difficult to follow than a fast moving episode of Spooks (with which it shares actress Keeley Hawes) or something from the Bourne franchise.

Apparently, after underwhelmed audiences previewed the 115-minute original edit, the film was cut down to the 87 minute version that is now available on DVD. Crucial elements of the plot must have fallen ~~to the cutting room floor~~ into the digital wastebasket, leaving unexplained jumps in the action and an odd sense of pace throughout the film.

£2.99 on Amazon, or just £2 in the Belfast branch of Head!

Let’s hope ITV4 or BBC Four show some more of the original series soon.

Hiding your Publication Scheme defeats the purpose of having one ... and raises your costs through needless FOIs

2013-03-21T22:43:00.002Z

Publication Schemes are supposed to publicise what information a public body holds and regularly makes available. The Information Commissioners Office have a Model Publication Scheme for District Councils in Northern Ireland, listing the type of information that they must make available.

You should publicise the fact that information is available to the public under the scheme. You should make sure the model scheme, guide to information, and schedule of fees are all available on your website, public notice board, or in any other way you normally communicate with the public. [Source: ICO Guidance]

As well as listing the information being made available, a publication scheme also signposts how to access it, usually offering URLs for online documentation. In theory this should cut down on needless Freedom of Information requests, since interested parties can find the information themselves without assistance. It cuts cost and improves transparency.

North Down council have (recently?) revamped their web presence, and in the process taken a step backwards in transparency. The new website has a nice look and feel, but it’s very light on information in some areas.

There is a page devoted to their Publication Scheme. However, it just lists the headings in their scheme and doesn’t link to the actual scheme. So the public are none the wiser about exactly what information is already available and how to access it. Mandatory items like the “most recent election results” are now missing from the website.

Oddly, at the time of writing – 21 March – not a single set of minutes from 2013 have been loaded onto North Down’s public repository. (Minutes tend to go online about one month after a meeting takes place: approved at the next month’s meeting. So I'd expect February's minutes to be missing.)

Their Local Government Reform page also refers to “images on this page show our current boundary, and the areas (in red) which will become part of the new North Down and Ards district council”. Yet there are no images on the page.

Magherafelt District Council have a reasonable publication scheme. Some other councils go further and keep the scheme as a set of browsable webpages with live links to the information. However, Magherafelt District Council haven’t managed to publish any council minutes since June 2012, rather contradicting their publication schemes advice that “minutes of Council meetings available on the website”.

Back in 2009 I blogged about my experience asking Magherafelt District Council for electronic copies of minutes. After been offered paper copies (at a cost) they relented and sent them electronically. And after a struggle it turned out that the council had voted in March 2005 to publish their minutes on their website. But four and a half years later they still hadn't got around to it. Seems that the wheels have fallen off that wagon again.

From past experience, I’d say that Belfast City Council has a pretty slick FOI process. However, checking their Publication Scheme tonight I found that the document (linked to from two different webpages) is dated February 2003 and has just celebrated its tenth birthday.

Someone in Belfast didn’t get the "memo" from the ICO that “Authorities which are still operating publication schemes from before 31 December 2008 should note that these expired on 1 January 2009.” While they might want to claim that they’re not a District Council and that the NI District Council model publication scheme does not apply, they could default to other model publication schemes for NI.

I’m sure the local ICO office in Belfast would be glad to offer advice …

Missing publication schemes, absent minutes and out of date documents lead me to make two conclusions: (1) transparency is not at the heart of local government in NI; and (2) members of the public are disinterested – or disheartened – and not reminding councillors and council officials that information is missing.

Neither of these is a sign of a healthy local democracy.

A feast of fantastic films at the 13th Belfast Film Festival (11-21 April)

2013-03-15T11:30:00.000Z

The programme for the 13th Belfast Film Festival was launched this week and in a little under a month, cinema screens across Belfast will be screening local and international films – shorts, features and documentaries – to suit all tastes and pockets. (Most of the films are £4-6 a ticket.)

I’ve previewed some of the screens and events below to whet your appetite before delving into the full programme. Festival programmer Stephen Hackett spoke to me at the launch and talked about some of his highlights in the dense programme of cinema.

listen to ‘Talking to Stephen Hackett about @BelfastFilmFes1 11-21 April’ on Audioboo

Thursday 11 April

Made in Belfast, 7pm, Moviehouse, £6 // Local actor Paul Kennedy has turned writer and director and his film premieres and opens the festival. A story of friendship and betrayal, of an author returning from Paris to face the friends and family he treated so badly.

La Traviata, 8.30pm, St Anne’s Cathedral, £8 // Members of NI Opera's Young Artists’ Programme will perform pieces by composers inspired by Verdi before the screening of La Traviata in a fabulous location.

Saturday 13 April

Spoof or Die, 5pm, QFT, £4 // In this short film set in modern day Northern Ireland, Craig and Nicky are bullied at a bus stop and decide to bunk off school. But as the ghosts of conflict emerge, their brash youthful anarchy leads them towards a darker, older world, and from that towards an unexpected closeness. Written by Stacey Gregg and directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah.

Only the Young, 7pm, QFT, £6 // A documentary following three teenagers living in a small desert town in South California. Skateboarding, friendship, heartbreak, desolation. “Delicate and ethereal filmmaking” from Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims.

Cool Hand Luke, 8pm, Crumlin Road Gaol, £10 // Clips from classic prison movies precede the outdoor screening of Cool Hand Luke starring Paul Newman. Tours of the gaol from 8pm; film starts at 9pm.

Sunday 14 April

A Hijacking, 7pm, QFT, £6 // Kasper from Borgen turns up in this Danish film written and directed by Tobias Lindholm. A tense thriller develops as the crew of MV Roven are taken hostage by Somali pirates while the shipping company CEO is a hostage to ever-escalating negotiations conducted from his corporate prison. Filmed on a real freighter that had once been hijacked off Somali.

Monday 15 April

What is this film called Love? 7pm, QFT, £6 // Mark Cousins is back at the Belfast Film Festival with his “poetic documentary about the nature of happiness” filmed for just £5.80 over three days in Mexico. Travel, homecoming, solitude and looks like it was filmed on a pocket Flip camera. Miles away from Mark Cousins’ previous output: the epic fifteen and a half hours of The Story of Film that tracked the history of cinema over more than a hundred years. Update - review and interview with mark Cousins.

Brief Encounters, 7pm, Beanbag Cinema, £5 // Documentary following photographer Gregory Crewsdon as he creates elaborate portraits of suburban American life and his own anxieties, dreams and inner desires. To get his still images, he sets a house on fire, builds enormous sets with large crews and shuts down city streets.

Tuesday 16 April

Dead Dad, 8.30pm, Beanbag Cinema, £6 // A story of loss, sibling relationships and resentment. Three siblings come home to attend their dad’s funeral. There’s an abandoned dinosaur themed mini golf course, the dad’s ashes and the need to get together to give the man who split them up a proper goodbye.

Last Tango in Belfast, 9pm, QFT, £7 // In the summer of 1973, Belfast City Council was “focused beyond the escalating unrest on the streets and firmly fixated on the cinematic souls of its citizens”. The Council’s viewing committee debated Last Tango in Paris over the summer and ultimately banned the Oscar-nominated film. Forty years on, Belfast Film Festival audiences will get a chance to review the film and come to their own conclusions.

Wednesday 17 April

Politics and Drama Debate, 6pm, Belfast MAC, £4 // Stratagem’s Quintin Oliver chairs a panel discussion asking why political drama is in short supply on these islands? Why do we know more about the workings of the fictional Danish parliament via Borgen than the devolved institutions in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh.

The Fifth Season, 7pm, QFT, £6 // A small Belgian agricultural community struggles as spring does not follow winter. Instead crops fail, cows stop producing milk, and human relationships deteriorate, perhaps at a faster rate than mother nature.

Thursday 18 April

Doctor Who, 7pm, Micro Cinema, Free // A screening of the colour-restored six Doctor Who episodes in the serial The Mind of Evil from the Jon Pertwee era. Free screening, but booking necessary.

Friday 19 April

Devices of Attachment, 6pm, Micro Cinema, £5 // Damian Gorman’s critically acclaimed 1992 film for BBC Two followed the writer across Northern Ireland with poems read against the backdrop of violent scenes of conflict and interviews with “ordinary, decent people”. This will be the first screening of the film in Ireland for 21 years, and will be followed by a Q&A with Danian Gorman and producer/director Hugh Thomson.

Pictures of the Pope, 8pm, Micro Cinema, £5 // Join William Crawley as he “assesses the best and worst onscreen portrayals of the pontiff, and what they tell us about the spiritual times in which they were made”.

Saturday 20 April

Niall Óg, Culturlann, 7pm, £6 // On top of the BBC documentary, another crew from Belfast Media Group followed twenty six year old Lord Mayor Niall Ó Donnghaile throughout his year in office. A year in Belfast’s life dominated by MTV and Titanic, but also conflict, regeneration, mental health and investment. Irish language documentary directed by Siobhán Ní Chiobháin and produced by Sorcha Nic Eochagáin featuring interviews with Niall as well as UDA leader Jacie McDonald.

The Evil Dead II at Ormeau Park, 9pm, £8 // Want to be scared witless in Ormeau Park? The organisers encourage you “to wrap up warm and bring your own seating, chainsaws, umbrellas, raincoats and hot drinks” to the “gaudily gory, virtuoso, hyper-kinetic horror sequel/remake”.

Sunday 21 April

We are Legion, 1pm, Beanbag Cinema, £5 // A feature length documentary looking into the birth, growth and culture of the Anonymous hacktivist movement with its online cyber attacks and offline protests. Copyright abuse, censorship, police brutality: We are Legion examines what motivates people to get off their sofas and join the risky world of civil disobedience and Anonymous activism. [This is the original film that was reedited and shortened in a recent BBC Four Storyville episode.]

Ernest and Celestine, 2pm, QFT, £6 // On the last day of the festival there’s an animated children’s film. “Giant bears and tiny mice don’t tend to socialise much, but when grumpy deadbeat bear Ernest and crafty orphan mouse Celestine cross paths, the two become inseparable friends and embark on a journey that will turn their worlds upside down.”

My Brooklyn, 3pm, Beanbag Cinema, £5 // Documentary exploring the forces reshaping Downtown Brooklyn and Fulton Street Mall (a popular shopping destination in New York City) as government policies and corporate development join forces to displace small businesses and long-time neighbourhood residents. Followed by discussion organised by Forum for Alternative Belfast.

Final Cut, 7pm, Moviehouse, £6 // György Pálfi’s premiers and closes the festival. It combines scenes from over 450 other films and marries them into a new narrative. A “master class in both film history and editing” as well as a storyline that can’t be carried by a lead actor or a common location.

There are also a couple of films looking at Human Trafficking as well as a series looking at pregnancy, motherhood and two shorts and a timely debate looking at abortion.

BBC Northern Ireland are also working with the festival to profile the work of playwright Stewart Parker. Details to be added when available

And if that’s not enough, Northern Visions (who recently won the Belfast community TV digital licence) are running chargeable workshops on Interview Techniques and Working with the Media (Tuesday 16 April) and Final Cut Pro 7 Editing for Beginners (Wednesday 17 and Thursday 18 April).

Can you see your tax dollars at work? Boosting accountability, efficiency and transparency the Louisville KY way

2013-03-08T16:30:00.000Z

How accountable and how transparent should public bodies be? Whether council departments within local government, Executive departments or their arms length bodies, do you wish you could see how your money – your taxes and rates – were being spent?

These organisations all produce annual reports and high level financial figures. Relatively few councils seem to publish any form of targets – other than perhaps recycling levels - and show regular progress towards or away from those figures. Progress reported against the Programme for Government at an NI Executive level can be woolly too, lacking figures to back up progress against numerical targets, and often marking against unspecific goals. [Click through for an example taken from the March 2011 PfG delivery report.]

I'm cross-posting this from Slugger O'Toole for the benefit of AiB readers who have been wondering what I got up to on the e-Governance programme last September* when I saw examples in the ~~states~~ commonwealths of Massachusetts and Kentucky of opening up information about spending as well as organisational performance to the public.

Louisville is the largest city in Kentucky (though not the capital), with a population of 741,096 in the consolidated city-county area. The front page of the Louisville Metro website has a link to answer the question “I want to ... See my tax dollars at work”.

Instead of some bland pages showing departmental spend, the link leads to a suite of data mining tools:

Louisville Checkbook allows you to drill into the spending of each agency/department, through a hierarchy of categories right down to the itemised monthly payments made, eg Agency -> Parks & Recreation -> Athletics & Community Centers -> Athletics -> Contractual Service -> Equipment Rental -> and then see their monthly photocopier payments. You can also look up any of the contracts, hundreds of scanned pages with very little redaction (eg, the Minolta contract for photocopiers/printers), and look at funding sources.

City Employees Salaries allows you to look up the annual salary, overtime and incentive/allowance of any city employee, from the Mayor ($110,346,60) to his speech writer ($45,910.80). Twenty five people have a higher salary than the Mayor. Every employee – other than police informants – are listed.

Even without this voluntary disclosure of information, the Open Records legislation in Kentucky requires any state/country/city office/agency to respond to public requests for information within three working days. Compare that with the workings of the UK or Irish Freedom of Information Acts.

LouieStat is perhaps the most innovative aspect of Louisville Metro’s emerging online transparency measures.

A handful of staff within the Office of Performance Improvement have been working with each department to define Key Performance Indicators. The current status along with the goal (when appropriate) and a Red/Amber/Green traffic light is published along with historic tracking information. The data is updated every two or three months.

There are some standard enterprise measures like dollars spent on overtime and hours lost due to work related illness and injury, along with department-specific metrics. Metro Animal Services track the percentage of calls not responded to within seven days. The Economic Growth and Innovation department (think Invest NI or Enterprise Ireland) track the jobs they have created, the annual salary of those jobs, and the number of active new clients.

Not everything is green. The strategy has been to get departments to define some KPIs and immediately publish them online – good or bad – and then provide the techniques and encouragement to drive through improvements and efficiency measures to meet the Mayor’s goal that “every department in the city of Louisville should at a minimum be in the top quartile of performance compared to our national competitors”. In the first year of running, departments representing 45% of the operating budget have been brought on board.

Together, these services make Louisville Metro more accountable, increase the transparency of how they spend (and earn) their funds, and spur them on to improve the quality and value of their services. The ongoing cost has been minimised by building contract scanning into business as usual processes and automating the feeds of financial and salary information.

It’s a long way from the glossy annual reports that come through NI ratepayers’ letterboxes each year, full of photographs and light on detail. While many NI councils will have internal KPIs, do any councils publish regularly data on their performance, and publish it in a manner that is readily accessible to members of the public (rather than buried in minutes of council committee meetings)?

Theresa Reno-Weber who heads up the Louisville Office of Performance Improvement is over in Ireland – north and south – next week. Expect an interview and more discussion of whether and how this could apply to local public bodies, particularly in the context of local government reorganisation and a focus on Executive delivery.

* The e-Governance programme was organised by the Irish Institute at Boston College with funding from the United States Department of State.

Test driving an electric Nissan Leaf

2013-03-07T12:30:00.000Z

It reminded me of driving a dodgem at the amusements, with the added bonus of a brake pedal and without the sparks.

Foot on the brake, press in the button on top of the stumpy gear stick and pull back into ‘drive’. Press down on the accelerator and the car silently glides forward. Step on it a bit more and the speed cranks up. Steadily. No jerking through the gears like an ordinary automatic. In fact, stamp on the accelerator and the car takes off – instant torque – down the road with an alarming sense of urgency. Yet inside the car, all is calm and quiet.

As part of the eDRIVE roadshow on the slipway immediately behind the Titanic Belfast building, I test drove an electric Nissan Leaf yesterday belonging to Donnelly Group. (The manufacturer didn’t trip when they came up with that name!)

Public test drives will be available again on Friday. Head down to Titanic Belfast during the day, or pre-register online. Don’t forget to bring both parts of your driving licence.

The Leaf is a five-door family hatchback. As the driver of a small Toyota Aygo, I am not a car geek. But I noticed electric windows; built-in GPS and infotainment touchscreen; camera-assisted reverse; air conditioning; and lots of other buttons and knobs. The exhaust pipe is missing from the back of the vehicle.

The traditional fuel gauge is replaced with a range readout of the number of miles left until the large air-cooled battery will be exhausted. The rev counter is replaced with an ammeter showing how heavily your driving is eating into your battery, or whether regenerative braking is actually recharging your battery.

You can plug the car into a standard household power socket. It will take seven hours or so to recharge the battery. A government grant is likely to cover the cost of installing a beefier three phase quick charge station that will provide one hour recharging. See the e-car NI website for more details.

There’s a mobile app - CarWings - to allow drivers to check their car’s range and battery charge state without going out to the garage or driveway. The app will also let you set the air conditioning to heat up or cool your car before you get in while it’s still plugged into the mains, saving vital battery life.

The Leaf is very quiet – inside and out. Very smooth to drive. And quite nippy. Apparently it goes from 0 to 60mph in 9.7 seconds and has a top speed of 93mph, though Titanic Quarter wasn’t a good place to test that out! The car’s maximum range on a full battery is 120 miles. With its linear acceleration, driving in the ice or snow might require adjustment.

Charging stations are becoming more common. Many council car parks now have reserved spaces with charging stations. But anecdotally, the spaces are often blocked by petrol cars. Ideally, you’d want to be able to let your car charge while you were in work (or at home asleep). According to the map on the eCarNI website, Tesco car park seems to be the only public charge point in Lisburn.

While there’s currently a large government subsidy, electric cars are still not cheap. No one knows what the value of a three year old electric car will be. To get around this mystery depreciation, many dealers are offering 1 or 3 year lease schemes. For a Nissan Leaf you might pay £239 a month for 3 years for the privilege of silently slipping around the roads. ~~On top of that you have your petrol costs.~~ On top of that you have your recharge costs of 3-4p a mile (perhaps £350 a year in electricity for 10,000 miles). Nissan’s warranty covers any battery problems.

In my eyes, getting an electric car would have to be a lifestyle choice as well as a economic one.

I was impressed with the short test drive: the Nissan Leaf was a lovely car. I like the concept of an emission-free vehicle. I love the idea of never having to fill up at a petrol station. And since I’ve no sense of smell, I won’t even miss the pleasant whiff of petrol fumes. I commute nine miles in and back out of work each day, so range would fine. I could get to Ballymena and back on a single charge. However, a round trip to Coleraine or Cookstown would require recharging along the way. So it would be impractical to have an electric car as the only vehicle in the household. Which makes it an expensive dodgem.

Update - Donnelly Group had a couple of cameras mounted in the Leaf and have passed on a link to some snippets from the test drive!

As a small car fan, I can’t ever see myself forking out £20,000+ for a car that size. At current specs and prices, it will be a long time before there is a sub-£10,000 two or four seater electric car on the market. That would be the tipping point for me. (Even the electric Smart car is coming in at £15,395 or £12,275 with £55/month battery rental.)

For some people the economics, the eco-credentials and the driving range will make sense.

For me, I think I’ll stick with my three-cylinder, low spec Aygo. Even if it is incredibly noisy inside the car compared with the tranquil Leaf.

The future’s electric. But not for a while.

(Dashboard image by Rudolf Simon via Wikipedia)

Planet Belfast – politics, conception and GM crops – on stage at The Mac

2013-02-23T16:52:00.000Z

Planet Belfast is a new play by Rosemary Jenkinson (White Star of the North, Basra Boy) produced by Tinderbox Theatre Company with a cast of four that runs in The MAC Belfast until March 2.

Alice (played by Abigail McGibbon) is the only Green MLA in the NI Assembly, and [suspending disbelief for ninety minutes] is a minister in the Executive. She’s a moody, fiery, workaholic, vodka-drinking politician who is willing to entertain all kinds of extreme dietary measures in pursuit of a baby. She’s struggling to build support for a GM bill with the help of Sinn Féin and an independent unionist. [Thank goodness for independent unionists, eh?]

Her husband of thirteen years Martin (Paul Kennedy) is not enjoying his fertility-enhancing diet of blueberries. And he’s not convinced about the eco measures that surround him at home. He published a controversial book on the Irish Famine a few years ago but now has writer’s block. Looking for inspiration, he takes a job in the Trauma Centre, transcribing victim’s stories and filling out funding applications.

“Keep it live. Keep it living. Keep it up so we keep our jobs” (Danny)

Danny (played very straight by Conor Grimes) runs the Trauma Centre complete with its story rooms, facials, and an emphasis that everyone is a victim and everyone has to have a story. A slippery character with his own part in the conflict, victim-speak flows smoothly from his mouth. Yet while the centre is imbued with “an atmosphere of mutual regard” Danny is quite racist, misogynist and passive aggressive to the point of threatening.

Into this mix of GM crops, conception and victims comes an old school friend and PR professional Claire (Tara Lynne O’Neill). She brings both friendship and conflict to Alice and Martin’s already tense marriage and professional lives as she uses all her powers to get what she wants.

The play has a very contemporary feel. The costumes are high street – there’s more than a touch of Arlene Foster in Alice’s wardrobe – and the issues are real. There are references to watering holes in Belfast as well as the foibles of current Executive ministers.

A bed of ambient music runs underneath most of the scenes. Ciaran Bagnall’s set is incredible with its sliding walls made of transparent fishing line. Imagery (designed by Conan McIvor) projected onto the walls seeps through onto the surfaces behind. The multi-layer set matches the multi-layer plot.

At times I felt that the play was being acted out in the dark, though the gloom certainly matches the melancholy feel of the play as the characters live with regrets about their past and face up to their uncertain futures.

A bit like a Bond film, Planet Belfast too seemed to have a whole succession of endings. If there’d been a power cut at any point in the last ten minutes, the current scene could have served as the last. And when the finale was reached, perhaps the dark tale deserved a darker conclusion.

Strong performances from the cast, many laugh-out-loud moments (if you dare), a fantastic set and great use of the word “langered” make it a play worth seeing. As part of the Backin’ Belfast campaign, the promo code ‘Planet’ may reduce ticket prices down to £10.

Planet Belfast has strong language throughout and more than a flash of thigh at one point. Less-than-liberal DUP supporters may find it neither comfortable nor funny; Green Party supporters may wonder what happened to Steven Agnew; and victims’ groups may be offended by the characterisation of their ‘industry’.

But the issues are real, even if the drama is fictional.

(Photos by Neil Harrison.)

(t)wittering [constructing a tagcloud of all your tweets]

2013-02-22T14:00:00.000Z

Just short of 20,000 tweets, Wordle shows what it's all been about ...

If you want to reproduce this for your own tweets, go to the Twitter website, Settings -> Profile, scroll down to request a download of all your tweets (feature being rolled out gradually across Twitter users), you'll be emailed a link after a few minutes, open the .CSV in the zip file, copy the column containing your messages, go to Wordle and paste in to the text field, wait a while, click Go, wait a while longer and then tailor your word cloud.

Belfast Children's Festival (8-15 March)

2013-02-13T18:22:00.000Z

Belfast Children’s Festival is back at the beginning of March for its fifteenth season.

I spoke to festival director Ali FitzGibbon after the programme launch earlier this month.

She was enthusiastic about the need for the festival and its value, and picked out some of her highlights.

listen to ‘Ali FitzGibbon (@Fitzali) at launch of @young_at_art Belfast Children's Festival’ on Audioboo

Giant inflatable Space Pups will be suspended from the ceiling of the Ulster Museum. Every couple of minutes the dogs inflate and deflate. Call into the museum and see if the canine breathing brings you “into a calm understanding of the cycle of birth, death and rebirth within nature”! Entrance to the museum is free. Tuesday 5-Sunday 17 (closed on Monday). There are also free Drop-In Pup Art Workshops running for free in the Ulster Museum 10am-4.45pm, Friday 8-Friday 15 March.

Open House is a free creative open space in the University of Ulster’s Belfast campus. You can drop in any time and listen to take part in the art workshops. And the bean bags and books are back: boxes and boxes of books, and storytelling every hour in English and Irish. Free! 3pm-6pm Friday 8 and 11am-6pm Saturday 9-Friday 15.

The New Rope String Band are described in the programme as maniac minstrels. “Elements of circus, slapstick and inspired silliness are spliced with beautiful acoustic music from world traditions: from Celtic, bluegrass and Cajun to old-timey, boogie-woogie, and Dixieland.” Sounds good. 7.30pm Saturday 9 at Crescent Arts Centre. Children £6, Adult £10.

The Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) at Queen’s University is a magical place with truly surround sound (including above and below you). They’re running a day long Big Ears – Sonic Arts for Public Ears workshop for 7-13 year olds (booking required) on Sunday 10. During the day the children will learn about digital sound design and composition, before presenting their original pieces at a showcase even at 7pm. £10 to participate in the workshop; showcase tickets £3.

Hop! follows “father and son Daedalus and Icarus trapped on an island because they know the big secret about King Minos”. Desperate to return home, Daedalus has a plan to fly away. Theatre and dance by Belgium performers (in English). Suitable for 4 year olds and up. The MAC at 10.30am and 6pm Monday 11; 10.30am Tuesday 12. Tickets £6 each, or £20 family.

Pre-booking is required for thirty minute Introduction to Digital Arts sessions in the Digital Arts Studio on Hill Street for 8-14 year olds. 11.45am and 1.15pm, Wednesday 13.

A Swiss company perform Wolf Under the Bed is based on twelve stories written by school children for the Swiss theatre company. Three lonely Finns sit in a snowy forest one night telling stories. “Some are funny, others are exciting, but as the night wears on, they get scarier and weirder and more and more outrageous.” The Baby Grand, 10.30am and 8pm Thursday 14 and 10.30am Friday 15. Tickets £6 each, or £20 family.

And the Andy Warhol exhibition in The MAC is pretty child friendly. Free. 10am-7pm, 8-February-28 April.

And lots, lots more including the annual Baby Rave and Build Your Own Comic workshop. More details on the Belfast Children’s Festival website as well as updates on Facebook and Twitter.

Talking to Conall McDevitt about what a new united Ireland might be like?

2013-02-08T21:58:00.001Z

(This should have appeared early on Friday morning - until the gremlins got in the way.)

Last week, before the release of the BBC NI Spotlight poll, I talked to a local MLA about the concept of a new Ireland. Over the last few months there has been an increasing level of chatter analysing the mechanics of calling a border poll and interpreting census results.

Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to delve under the instinctive longing and loathing that is so often associated with the notion of a united Ireland to explore what the new state might look like if the conditions could ever be met to have a poll.

Much – though not all – of the commentary comes back to promoting a nationalist ideal of an El Dorado paradise or declaring the unionist nightmare of forcibly cutting ties to the British monarch.

Intellectually it’s a lot more interesting to get beyond the emotion and wonder … What if? What might be the shape of this potential state? How might the population in the north east corner relate to those in the south west? What governance arrangements might be put in place, or indeed left in place? What parts of Northern Ireland’s public sector and civil society would survive, or even thrive? How would the six counties integrate with the twenty six?

And while a poll may be a distant prospect, grasping the Presbyterian principle of ‘not refusing light from any quarter’ I wondered whether a Northern Ireland that is still settled in the Union had anything to learn from new Ireland thinking.

I’d heard Conall McDevitt, SDLP MLA for South Belfast, talking about the importance of region at an election event a couple of years ago, so I met up with him last week to pick his brains. We talked about identity, economy and his opinion of Sinn Féin’s “flag-waving” activity around the border poll. But first I asked about his vision of a united Ireland.

listen to ‘1/5 Talking to @ConallMcD about his vision of a new Ireland’ on Audioboo

I think one of the great issues with the debate around the a border poll and in fact one of the great issues within both Irish unionism and Irish nationalism is that we have an awful habit of wanting to either remain in the union or to be in a united Ireland. But if we’re honest with ourselves we haven’t done a huge amount of work in trying to work through what that would look like (if you’re thinking about a united Ireland) or to consider the practical issues around it. How would you pay for it? What system of government might be best? Would it be a unitary state? Or would you have a federal Ireland?

If there was a united Ireland – or a new Ireland as Conall tends to refer to it – what might the state look like in twenty or so years time? That turned out to be a tricky question to tease out an answer. Conall’s vision isn’t wedded to a fixed end point. The journey towards the vision seems to hold the value. But he did offer up some clues:

Should it be a federal place? If it was a federal place, then Northern Ireland would remain. Now many people would argue that if you think properly about the Good Friday Agreement and about setting up institutions in Northern Ireland that support both sides of our community, that have the checks and balances that we have built in to our way of doing government; about the new beginning to policing and the ability to transform something that was seen as a huge part of the problem into something that is now accepted and supported by the vast majority of our people. If you think about all of that then really you’re ending up with a new Ireland that would probably be federal I nature. Now if that’s the presumption, then we all have a duty to turn that presumption into a proper proposition and we can’t delay that conversation.

So what are the things that we need to talk through within this island. We need to talk through what it would mean in terms of transfer of powers. Would we keep an NHS in Northern Ireland? I suspect we’d probably want to. I don’t know too many people – be they former republican prisoners or the most loyalist of loyal people I know – who would want to give up the NHS as we know it today. In fact they want to deepen the NHS. I always say that the NHS is a British gift to the people of this part of Ireland. But the people of this part of Ireland, the people of Northern Ireland, made it their own and have defended it and built it as their own. In fact, people in England and Wales look to our integrated health and social care model here and they say “that’s what we’d like”. And they say that the Northern Ireland NHS is what it’s really about. It’s the most pure in terms of living up to Ernest Bevin’s ambition for a health and social care system.

So my vision of a new Ireland isn’t proscriptive in that I don’t have an immediate solution that says “here it is lads”. But it’s a journey and the journey involves us thinking about questions like sovereignty, questions like federacy, questions like identity in a much more open and expensive way than we’ve ever been able to do so to date.

listen to ‘2/5 Federalism & regional identity in a new Ireland - @ConallMcD’ on Audioboo

Would there be a resurgence in the four provinces of Ireland? Would Donegal become part of the “north”? Regional identity was key to Conall’s analysis.

Getting our head around the concept of region is critical to building a new Ireland. I say this for two reasons. First of all Northern Ireland was a contested state. Traditionally nationalists have said “Northern Ireland should not exist, the partition of Ireland was a mistake”. And that is true. But the fact is that post-1998, Northern Ireland has been legitimised in its existence and nationalism has to stop denying this. And there are some parts of nationalist thinking that still do deny it.

We have to embrace the concept of region. The trick to a new Ireland is to make Northern Ireland as it is today work. That is the key to building a new Ireland. To make Northern Ireland as it is today a success. And then the second question is if it is a success as it is today within the United Kingdom why couldn’t it be a success within an Irish jurisdiction.

What about the political organisation of a potential united Ireland? A few more TDs in the Dáil? Might the NI Assembly survive? Conall could foresee the PSNI continuing to police Northern Ireland while the Gardaí patrolled the rest of Ireland.

Éamon de Valera in debates in the Dáil at the time of the Republic of Ireland bill, whenever they were establishing the republic, talked openly and at length about the fact that a united Ireland would nearly certainly be a federal Ireland. O think federalism would be the way of us being able to capture the diversity of who we are. It would be the way we could use to acknowledge regional identities and regional levels of government at the same time as having a national sense of purpose. It would involve sending TDs to the Dáil rather than MPs to Westminster but Stormont would most likely remain. Stormont would most likely continue to run the health service here.

I suspect the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland would be happy to keep having an accountable police service – the PSNI is the most accountable police service in the European Union, more accountable than the Gardaí are. So they might like the idea of regional police service in Northern Ireland and the Gardaí still policing elsewhere in the island.

That’s quite ordinary in other parts of the world. Most European states, with the exception of the UK, are federal. Most Europeans – and we go there on our holidays – have really strong regional identities as well as strong national ones. I think there’s a great duty on us whether we’re nationalist or unionist to begin to respect people’s right to hold a regional identity. And to hold it without prejudice of also having a further level of identity which is there national one.

Would a devolved Northern Ireland cause, say, the West of Ireland, to seek devolved powers too?

Whenever you think about the new Ireland, it is based on the concept of self-determination. That means that Northern Ireland has the right to self-determination and the island as a whole has the right to self-determination. But it would undoubtedly begin a process of exploration about how the new Ireland would be governed. I certainly wouldn’t want to stand here as a northerner by choice and dictate terms to the West or to Munster or to other parts of Ireland.

Conall pointed to different parts of Great Britain having “different levels of ambition for regionalism”.

I’m sure the new Ireland would be no different. Parts of the island would want to enjoy the benefits of devolution, other parts may not. But the point of the debate is that this isn’t a debate about flags. It’s actually a debate about systems of government and public services, it’s a debate about economics, and it’s also a debate about identity not in a simply British or Irish sense but in a regional and then British or Irish sense, or possibly in a regional, British and Irish sense.

There’s no question that in the new Ireland people born and wishing to enjoy a British identity should have the right to that identity. That seems to me to be a fundamental tenet of the new Ireland.

There also no question that the new Ireland will not be a nationalist Ireland. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a new Ireland. The new Ireland will not be something – that as Mark Durkan used to say – either a nationalist pipedream or a unionist nightmare. It will be a place that we really haven’t really haven’t fully thought through yet. It will be a place where identity is probably multi-layered; where governance is probably quite devolved; where, yes, there may be different health systems in one part of the other; where there will be a British element and a British dimension to government whether we like it or not and where Europe will be an overriding context.

After a discussion around Carson’s Irish unionism and Ireland’s place in Europe, Conall summed up saying:

Those of us who espouse a new Ireland need to be expansive and ambitious about how that will be articulated and we need to be very open-minded about the identities that will emerge. And Irish unionism will be a central political tradition and culture. Northern Irish unionism will remain because Northern Ireland would remain.

listen to ‘3/5 Economic pros and cons of a new Ireland - @ConallMcD’ on Audioboo

I asked Conall to list positive economic reasons why Ireland would be stronger united.

He felt that “the structure and nature of the economy on the island of Ireland” was set apart from the “big island next door” in that “the bellwether of our economy is agri-food”. Secondly we’re a relatively young population. There’s a perception that we’re better educated than ”cousins” in Great Britain. And “we’ve developed a reputation and a niche for what’s known in economic terms as innovation – making the connection between a big idea and turning it into an economic opportunity”.

As an island, the biggest cost factor (for manufacturing) after labour is energy. Conall argued that energy is already operating on an all island basis “not for political reasons but because it makes economic sense to do so”. And there was room for further efficiencies and integration, not only in energy, but specialist healthcare and in developing more sustainable economic and environmental policies.

Is there an economic argument? Yes. Has it been proven? No.

Any economic downsides? Might some GB-focussed businesses not withdraw causing churn in the Northern Ireland economy?

Conall evoked the debates around Home Rule when “certain economic interests [in what would become Northern Ireland] threatened to leave and relocate, most notably the ship-building enterprises”. However, no one (speculatively or unnecessarily) left.

You’ll find that a lot of our call centres have operations here and have operations in the Republic and both are serving the British market. The service industry sector – be it professional services, legal services, accountancy services, public relation services, marketing services or more techie [companies] – is highly mobile. What the island of Ireland needs to do, and Northern Ireland needs to do, is to ensure it attracts the type of service industry to locate here which will be incentivised and want to stay for a long period of time. I don’t think the changing constitutional status will be the overriding issue in terms of them staying. It will be cost. If costs go up, they’ll leave. If costs stay stable and it’s a favourable tax environment and they’ve got a good throughput of whatever skills they need, they’ll stay. We need to decouple the politics of this from the economics of this …

Where there is a significant debate to be had, and where we’ve not been honest about it with each other at all, is around the public financing of a new Ireland. What would Britain’s relationship be with Northern Ireland during the first ten or fifteen years of transition? Would it be on the 31 December year X that they just turn the tap off and walk away? Or would it be that they engaged in a gradual decoupling? … Those are the debates that we’re not getting into because people are afraid to go there because they might get an answer they don’t like. But they’re not just political debates, they’re actually public finance debates and solid debates about crunching the numbers and looking at your options.

listen to ‘4/5 The manner of the new Ireland debate - @ConallMcD’ on Audioboo

We talked about the manner of the debate about the possible shape and workings of a new Ireland? Conall was keen to stress that the debate should be elevated above being a party political football.

The last time nationalism sat down as nationalism to talk about what a new Ireland would look like was the New Ireland Forum. Its report is still out there. It says you could have a federal model, you could have a confederal model, you could have a unitary state. That was nearly thirty years ago. That’s the last time there’s been a serious debate about this. I think nationalism is doing itself a great disservice by not sitting down and openly and honestly discussing what it’s vision of a new Ireland would be.

And I’d go a step further: I believe nationalism has a duty to do this. And it has a duty to take it out of party politics. In other words, to find common ground around the vision for a new Ireland [and] the model and the elevate that above party politics so whenever unionism and other political traditions on this island want to engage in a serious contribution they know what they’re talking about. At the moment this is more of an emotional debate than it is a serious political one. Those of us who espouse a new Ireland have to have the courage to be more than just emotional about that espousal. We have to have the courage to say we have nothing to fear from engaging in a serious conversation about what that would look like. In fact we have a duty to engage each other in the first instance, but also to engage unionism if they’re willing to engage in what the options might look like.

Conall described Sinn Féin’s activity around the border poll as “a lot of flag-waving”.

What Sinn Féin are doing is using the question of a united Ireland for selfish partisan gain. The SDLP has been invited to one Sinn Féin event. And I know because I spoke at it and it was in London … I’m not aware that any Southern party – Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour – have ever been invited to a single event organised by Sinn Féin to talk about a united Ireland. This is not about having a conversation about a united Ireland. This is about Sinn Féin trying to out-green everyone else. And that’s a mistake.

He added:

The new Ireland is too important to reduce to being a party political football. If you really love Ireland, if you are really interested in reconciliation, if you really care about building a new Ireland, as against just trying to be a big flag-waver, you need to step away from your selfish party interest and you need to be willing to come to the table and sit down who share your national identity but disagree fundamentally with your politics.

The SDLP made proposals for all nationalist parties to sit down and work through the issues around unification four years ago. They raise it each time they sit down with the other parties, but to date there has been no uptake.

Maybe Sinn Féin going off and running their campaign is just their way of being able to let some frustration out. But it’s not responsible. Because what it does is give the impression that this is a party political issue … This is about the shape of our nation, and our nation is not just nationalist. The new Ireland cannot be a nationalist Ireland, it must be something much bigger than that. Therefore it must be done in a more sober, more settled, more thought through, more inclusive way than any single party could ever lead.

listen to ‘5/5 Convincing people to vote for a new Ireland in @ConallMcD's lifetime’ on Audioboo

Finally, for a new Ireland to be a real possibility, non-nationalists – ie, a lot of unionists – would need to be convinced to vote in favour. Isn’t that an impossible task for the foreseeable future?

I’ve never seen a new Ireland in any other way. Northern Ireland holds the keys to the new Ireland. Northern Ireland has to work for the new Ireland to be possible. If people think that by destroying Northern Ireland they’ll create a new Ireland they’re not thinking through the issue at all. The way you build a new Ireland is to build reconciliation, to build stability, to build prosperity in Northern Ireland and for that jurisdiction to feel comfortable in making its transition from being part of the United Kingdom to being part of a new Ireland.

And that means people of a unionist identity of tradition feeling comfortable with the idea that they may part of a new Ireland in the fullness of time. That Northern Ireland would remain – as I have said – is most likely the best way to move this debate on … would surely be the first step in indicating to those of a unionist identity that we do not want to destroy anything. We do not want to take anything away. This is not about diluting anyone’s sense of identity. It is not about undermining any institutions of government that people hold dear at a regional level. It is not even about altering too fundamentally the political power bases at a regional level. It is simply about understanding that the region is now successful, it is capable of its own self-determination, and it is able to make a peaceful and sober decision to – in its own interests – shift its sovereign status from being that is part of the UK to being that is part of a new Ireland …

The debate about the new Ireland will start with what some people might consider to be preposterous suggestions, like that it won’t be a unitary state, like that it won’t be a nationalist place, but it will end with those suggests – in my opinion – being the reality.

We talked about potential pain in any actual transition.

The biggest barrier most likely will be a question around public finances, around how we protect the public services in Northern Ireland (as we have them today) in a new Ireland, because there are quite big differences. Would it mean we pay a little more here at a regional level? Those are likely to be much bigger debates, I think if I’m honest with you, than debates around something really practical like a phone number.

I’m quite confident that if we take this debate away from being a party political football and we take it on to being a national conversation about the what if, that we will find very imaginative answers emerging from very interesting corners. What is really regrettable is that some people in the political class will just refuse to engage in the conversation. As if they’re scared of the prospect. But sure no one should be scared of a prospect that is rooted in human interest, in democratic validation through referenda, in properly considered processes.

I suggested that if a united Ireland was ever to succeed it would require good community relations on a scale beyond where we are today. The new racism would potentially be north and south. Without solving the problems in Northern Ireland first, is it even worth starting discussions in the public space about models of a new Ireland?

It’s the same debate. You don’t get a new Ireland without reconciliation. You don’t get reconciliation without the truth about our past. So everything is connected. Everything is joined up. The steps are [counting on his fingers] reconciliation, truth, and a new Ireland. That’s quite clear in my mind … For anyone to say we can have a new Ireland and we won’t have dealt with our recent past, we can have a new Ireland and we won’t have engaged in a meaningful process of reconciliation in Northern Ireland – and for that matter a meaningful process of reconciliation across Ireland – they are deluding themselves. You will not build a new Ireland from an un-reconciled people.

Does Conall think he’ll see the new Ireland in his lifetime?

I think I will, because the die is cast in terms of our society moving on. In our journey onwards we are reaching junctions which require us to sometimes look back and deal with the past, sometimes to look sideways and deal with each other, but they invite us to take the next step forward.

I’m not going to sit here and be a prophet in terms of telling you where it will end, but will I see a new Ireland? Absolutely. Will it be in the vision of Pádraig Pearse in 1916? I just don’t know. And I don’t think it’s my duty to look back a hundred years for my guidance. I think it’s my duty to look forward and to be open-minded and imaginative about it. But I don’t want to have to do so in a climate or culture of prejudice against me just because I hold that view.

Thanks to Conall for agreeing to the interview.

In conversation with Presbyterian moderator designate Rev Rob Craig

2013-02-06T18:04:00.001Z

Rev Rob Craig was elected last night as the next moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. He’s termed “moderator designate” until he takes over at the opening night of the General Assembly in June.

In a process that sometimes reminds me – admittedly in some small ways – of the election of a US President, only two ministers were put forward for the vote this year, so the 19 Presbyteries (groups of ministers and elders in different geographic areas) had a straight choice between Rev John Dickinson and Dr Craig. [Presbyteries end up like a US state, each with only 1 vote in the electoral college.]

For nearly twenty years, Dr Craig has been minister to the congregation up in Kilfennan in Derry’s Waterside. It is undeniably symbolic that a local minister was chosen as moderator (17 out of 19 presbyteries) in the year the General Assembly will escape from Fisherwick Place in Belfast and be held in the Millennium Forum in Derry.

The tweeting moderator previously worked in Clough and Seaforde congregations as well as his assistantship in Glengormley. He’s a past pupil of Armstrong Primary School in Armagh and Wallace High School in Lisburn.

listen to ‘Presbyterian moderator designate Rob Craig @robcraig54 reflecting on his appointment’ on Audioboo

I spoke to the new moderator designate today at lunchtime and he explained to me what his role would entail and what had gone through his head when he heard the result last night. He spoke of the opportunity that the out-of-Belfast General Assembly offered delegates in June and hoped that many would choose to stay overnight in the area and change of atmosphere would be reflected in the nature of the debates and discussions.

Asked to rate the health of the denomination he would shortly become the figurehead of, he said that statistically there are signs of “ailing” when you look at the declining numbers of members, baptisms and new young communicants. However, he also recognised that “those who have stayed, stayed because it matters to them, because their faith is a living thing and in that sense the church may be more vibrant than it has ever been”.

He said that “the foundations of Christendom have crumbled and that means the church now finds itself in a new situation” no longer holding sway over Western Europe. He added “there are competing voices – the church is just one of those voices – and we must learn to listen, to respect, to engage and then to present our case”.

He described the denomination’s need to be “salt of the earth and the light of the world” and to have an impact on the world. I suggested that perhaps the church was better known for being salt than light with recent media coverage noting the denominations’ anti-same sex marriage, anti-flag protests, and anti-abortion statements.

Dr Craig said that the church “is responding to these ethical issues that present themselves”. However, he countered that

“…if, for the sake of argument, the church is seen as against abortion we also want to say that is because the church is for life. If we say the church is against same-sex marriages we want to say no the church is for marriage and a much richer and deeper understanding of human sexuality.

And also I would want to say alongside that that the church is for compassion, and for caring for people, and sometimes when statements are made which are true and to which we sign up, it’s not possible to show that human face and caring dimension of the church which I know is there … I hope that’s the kind of ministry I’ve had and I don’t want to [as moderator] be any different.”

Dr Craig takes over from the current moderator Rev Dr Roy Patton on the evening of Monday 3 June.

Youth Film School at the Crescent Arts Centre

2013-02-04T22:38:00.000Z

The Crescent Arts Centre is offering opportunities for folk of various ages to get practical experience and learn about film-making.

Starting on the 10 February and running for three weeks, a Youth Film School course is running between 10am and 4pm for 13-18 year olds.

Want to be the next James Cameron? or perhaps you're walking around with a great idea for a film and have never known how to develop it?

If so, then this is the course for you.

Through practical demonstrations, with broadcast equipment, tuition in story and character, this is a great opportunity to unfurl the magical world of filmmaking.

They're also running a Making the Documentary course for bigger children. It started a couple of weeks ago, but if you're lucky it'll tun again later this year.

This course will teach the fundamentals of documentary and generic filmmaking.

It will guide the student through recognising and developing a story, teach camera skills, sound skills, composition, lighting and editing.

The relaxed, informal atmosphere of this course provides an excellent introduction to those who are curious about the film making process but with more than enough content to fulfill those who would wish to pursue it further.

Good to see such good openings locally. If only I had the time ... or the lack of years!

"an invitation to people to engage in deep moral reflection on the consequences of war and political violence"

2013-02-04T09:30:00.000Z

Over the last few months I've been reading Ed Moloney’s book Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland which is based on interviews given by republican Brendan Hughes and loyalist David Ervine about their experiences and actions in the Troubles. The interviews were given as part of the Belfast Project, an oral history of republican and loyalist paramilitaries that is archived in the Burns Library at Boston College.

(Coincidentally I spent time in Boston College in September, part of an e-Governance exchange trip organised by the college and sponsored by the US State Department. More about that in posts later this month.)

To get beyond the 2-3 minute media soundbites that tend to sum up the latest status of the project and to take a look at the project as a whole, I spoke last week to Anthony McIntyre (who conducted many of the republican interviews) about the original purpose of the project, the subpoena requesting access to Brendan Hughes’ and Dolours Price’s contribution (later extended to include “any and all interviews containing information about the abduction and death of Mrs Jean McConville”) and the resulting appeals in the US and UK courts.

You can listen to the whole edited interview (download as MP3). The major quotes below are labelled with the time [minutes:seconds] to allow you to just to that point in the interview. [Update - a full transcript of the interview has been posted on the Boston College Subpoena News website.]

listen to ‘Interview with @AnthonyMcIntyre about the Belfast Project ("Boston College tapes")’ on Audioboo

[We were] starting out on a journey of bringing voices in to the overall historical narrative. I have a view of history – given that I’ve done some historical training and have an interest in it – I have a view of history that one history becomes dominant to the extent that it manages to suppress or marginalise another. Therefore I think it is very important to have as many voices in [a] historical narrative. It adds more colour, complexity, the shading to the tapestry that is history.

Over the course of decades we have been moving history away from the kings and queens, the generals and prime ministers, the politicians and judges. We’ve been getting the history of the subjects rather than their ruler, the prisoners rather than their jailers, the voter rather than the voted. I’ve always thought that it was very important to get voices out that are different from what the norm is.

Twenty six republicans were interviewed covering “all manner of republicanism”. Anthony McIntyre says he “interviewed people primarily for their knowledge of republicanism and not for their gripes or their animosity”. With a “criterion of confidentiality” to protect the project so interviewees wouldn’t blurt out about their participation, he says it was “difficult to get as many Sinn Féin people as I would have liked to have got”. However, whenever the archive comes out “people will be pleasantly surprised at the range of views enlisted”. (In contrast the UVF gave approval for their members’ involvement in the project.)

Ed Moloney’s book Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland was published after the death of republican Brendan Hughes and loyalist David Ervine. I asked Anthony McIntyre whether this was intended to be the pattern following other contributors deaths. [04:07]

Brendan Hughes had insisted while he was alive that he wanted his interviews published then. Now that would have seriously jeopardised the project, I thought. So we had to persuade him to hold his wish and we promised him that at some point we would do our utmost to get his story out there … And then Boston College in the interests of balance – and also to promote their own image of being a mediator/bridge-builder in what they liked to refer to as the two sides in the northern conflict – it was their idea to publish the David Ervine narrative as well.

So if there wasn’t to be a succession of books, how did Anthony McIntyre imagine the oral history archive would be used and released? [07:16]

It’s safe enough to say now that some of the people who have been interviewed for the project are dead … Simply because a person dies does not mean – nor never meant – that their material was going to be published in book form. Ed [Moloney] was involved, independent of myself, in negotiations with Boston College – shortly before the subpoena was issued – for the conditions whereby people would have access to the interviews upon the death of people. He was determined to ensure that it would be for a bona fide research exercise that people could not simply walk in and say well let’s have a look at it.

There were discussions about whether the archive should be digitised, published online in transcript form, but “no hard and fast rules” had been agreed. [08:30]

But there’s no point in gathering an oral history if at some point it is not made available to the public. This is the whole point of doing it … It was a truth recovery process and we were trying to bring as much truth and honesty to the republican end of the war narrative as was possible. There was no point bringing out this truth if people weren’t going to hear it at some point.

The stability of the Belfast Project changed in March 2011 whenever the British Government (on behalf of the PSNI) requested help from the US Department of Justice to access the archive. Anthony McIntyre explained his view of the timeline and the argument in Ed Moloney’s affidavits suggesting that catalyst for this action was a report by Allison Morris in the Irish News based on an interview with Dolours Price, followed three days later by a more detailed report by Ciaran Barnes in the Sunday Life. [10:52]

Anthony McIntyre described his disappointment with Boston College’s initial legal reaction to the subpoena and the subsequent action and appeals lodged by himself and Ed Moloney. They have applied to have the case heard in the Supreme Court and “one of the justices put a stay on any handover of the archive until the Supreme Court make a decision on hearing the case”. And recently …

… Boston College has appealed to the First Circuit Court to drop the case given that Dolours Price has unfortunately died. They said that the whole issue is now moot and that there should be no further action.

Anthony McIltyre speculated about who wants the information and for what purpose. [18:59]

The PSNI are certainly pushing for this with a vigour and it seems to go the whole way up. It may have bypassed the NIO at the start and then was handled by the Home Office. But certainly between the PSNI and the Home Office – and I imagine the NIO by this stage – are all on board and determined to get this material.

Are they risking so much good will, are they risking annoying the academic establishment just for the sake of having a read of what is there when it will come out eventually? Or do they want it for prosecutions.

I believe they want it for prosecutions and I believe that they also want it for the purposes of – some of the elements anyway want it – for the purposes of embarrassing [Gerry] Adams who does seem to be under pressure these days in relation to many questions that take us back to the past …

You can never really move away from the conflict while people who were central to the past remain central to the present. And I think this sort of thing is always going to dog us. For that reason I think maybe had Mr Adams and company not been around the determination to get these archives would not have been as great as it is.

At various points in the interview, Anthony McIntyre points out that he does not control the archive: the completed interviews rest under the control of Boston College.

Destroying the archive would not be as drastic as “the PSNI getting their hands on it [early] and turning it into evidence”. [20:26]

The task of researcher is to protect those who participated in the research from any harmful effects. That’s your first objective. That’s the ethical imperative. After that the interviews don’t really matter in comparison to the welfare of the interviewees.

I asked Anthony McIntyre whether he wished the project had been undertaken with a different college or carried out under different rules? [23:13]

I have stated on record before I regret that I got involved in it simply because of the harmful effects it could have on other people. The project is eminently defensible. It was simply done with the wrong university. Both ourselves and the loyalists relied on the word of the university that had a law school, that was prestigious and was well regarded in Ireland, that had set up its stall in terms of having helped the peace process. We relied on that university with its array of lawyers, the wealth to have done the homework for us. Turned out that it hadn’t and we have had to pay a terrible price for that. So in that sense, I regret getting involved with Boston College. Yes, very much so. It was on American soil and we would have never done it had somebody had said put it in Queen’s. We wouldn’t have felt that it was safe. Boston College led us to believe it was absolutely safe in an American university. Unfortunately we fell for it and unfortunately for our research participants, we believed Boston College and we’re now paying the price.

A few hours before the interview, Senator John Kerry was approved by the US Senate as the next Secretary of State. He has subsequently been sworn in as America’s top foreign policy official.

An alumus of Boston College, John Kerry wrote in January 2012 to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her to “to work with the British authorities to reconsider the path they have chosen and revoke their request” in light of “the impact that it may have on the continued success of the Northern Ireland peace process” as well as “implications for the confidentiality of other research projects of this nature”.

Now that John Kerry is sitting behind the Secretary of State desk, does his previous intervention offer the researchers hope? [24:37]

He will be reminded about it. Then we move into realpolitik. Then we will really see what happens, just how strong the British desire is at the top to get this. If John Kerry allows this to be handed over then we know that the opposition he faced to his motion to quash was very, very strong and he didn’t feel that as a diplomat he could resist it.

He added:

I do have a view that one of the motives – I can’t stand over this obviously, because we never know these things – but one of the motives is that the British want something strong to bargain with while Sinn Féin and others continue to shout about the past in this one-eyed game of truth and recrimination that they sometimes call truth and reconciliation.

Truth here is we want to tell the truth about you but we don’t want to hear your truth about us. And I think that with Sinn Féin demanding the likes of prosecutions of the soldiers in Bloody Sunday and saying that any soldiers convicted will not be afforded the two year maximum jail term, I think the British state are going to make it very clear that they too have a card to play here and that if the past isn’t addressed in a proper way puts it to rest then there’s trouble for all. And we’re caught in the middle. That’s my view and how sustainable it is? I’m certainly open to persuasion on it.

If the subpoena is blocked and the interviews are released to academics and ultimately the public, in ten or twenty years time what does Anthony McIntyre think the public will have learnt from the archive? [28:05]

Without revealing anything in the interviews, I do not think that people will come away with the view that war is something that should be glorified or conflict is something that should be glorified.

People talk at times about this archive as if it is some sort of true detective novel and they’re all waiting to get it so they can look from one page to the next [to see] the gory details.

This project was probably at its root an invitation to people to engage in deep moral reflection on the consequences of war and political violence. That’s probably the most important point about it. How people who saw conflict, were involved in conflict, who experienced conflict, how those people came to see it. How they actually seen it at the time and how they’ve come to see it later in life.

I think there are great lessons to be learnt from that. It is always important to ask people to ethically reflect on the actions that they have been involved in. It always serves as a means to help protect future generations from going down the same path. We very much have to understand why people who would normally run about a life like yourself or your next door neighbour end up coming involved in serious political violence.

You can follow developments at the Boston College Subpoena News website and catch Anthony McIntyre's blogging at The Pensive Quill.

(Cross-posted from Slugger O'Toole.)

Heaven in a Nightclub ... the spiritual roots of jazz in the Waterside Theatre (Fri 1 Feb)

2013-01-24T22:23:00.003Z

As part of the City of Culture 2013, there’s an evening of jazz up in Derry’s Waterside Theatre on Friday 1 February at 8pm.

Three artists – Bill Edgar, Ruth Naomi Floyd and Randy Pendleton – will perform examples of ragtime, blues, spirituals, funeral bands and much, much more. The Heaven in a Nightclub jazz concert will be interspersed with historical information about the spiritual roots of jazz. So you’ll go home with your foot tapping and your brain enriched!

Dr Bill Edgar is a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. His approach is that “jazz ought to entertain” but its background is deeply rooted in the history and social and spiritual experiences of African-American people who were reared in slavery yet nurtured on the Gospel message in every aspect of life.

Heaven in a Nightclub is organised by Contemporary Christianity and the Presbytery of Derry and Donegal. Tickets (adult £8, concession £5) are available from the Waterside Theatre box office, or in bulk from Billy McIlwaine (028 7134 6718 or billymcilwaine AT hotmail DOT com).

One Rogue Reporter - putting "meat and two veg" on the menu at Out to Lunch

2013-01-13T17:53:00.001Z

Part comedy, part rant and part personal redemption crusade, Rich Peppiatt’s one man show One Rogue Reporter hit the stage at the Out to Lunch Arts Festival on Friday.

The ex-journalist was open about his less than illustrious career as a journalist at the Daily Star (which included including being sent out dressed in a burqa); a career that ended with a very public resignation letter. Whether looking for salvation or revenge, creating the show gave the newspaper industry a taste of its own medicine in parallel with the Leveson Inquiry.

The show’s title was taken from the phrase News International used to dismiss – or explain – the initial phone hacking allegations, though it also describes the ex-reporter’s career change from newsroom to the stage.

Peppiatt’s routine is peppered with montages of clips from Leveson, videos showing that newspaper editors don’t appreciate being door stepped, and dissection of the Daily Mail website (“where ‘public’ has no ‘L’”). [Rich – if you’re reading, note that as well as being a terrible story, the online Mail story you illustrate also has a missing apostrophe, a crime against grammar!]

In amongst the misdemeanours and doubtful practices, Peppiatt did find room in his 70 minute routine to praise some stories and campaigns from the newspapers he targeted.

Two sections of the performance stand out as particularly shocking. One confronts an ex-editor with his own private, saucy text messages to a woman who wasn’t his wife. The fact that the ex-editor agrees that such correspondence from other people could be made public makes his squirming all the more visible.

On the International Forum for Responsible Media blog, Athalie Matthews describes the second instance better than I can:

On the recurring theme of spherical objects, the show ends unforgettably with close-up hidden camera footage of [News of the World chief reporter Neville] Thurlbeck’s naked nether regions as he receives a full body massage at the naturist Dorset guesthouse he stayed at ‘in the call of duty’ – but evidently enjoyed somewhat beyond it. Don’t eat beforehand as Thurlbeck’s meat and two veg are not a pretty sight – unless of course you are the guesthouse’s owners Sue and Bob Firth who secretly filmed him in the event that scores should ever need to be settled. If ever Thurlbeck rued one of his own headlines it will now forever be: “The Guesthouse where All Rooms Come with Ensuite Pervert”. And if anyone doubted the rumours that he seriously enjoyed his stay – or missed the internet footage – this one’s for you. Mrs Thurlbeck, please stay away.

For a Belfast lunchtime audience, I was surprised how few people turned their heads at this point!

Apparently I have to take some personal responsibility for this tasteless image being shared with a hundred or more lunchtime festival goers as I suggested that CQAF’s Sean Kelly check out the show during its Edinburgh Fringe run. Who thought I’d help bring pornography (even if devoid of eroticism) to Belfast?

By reaching down to the level of the gutter, the show succeeds in its mission to highlight examples of the poor standards of journalism and lack of editorial leadership in national newspapers. Maybe it was the lunchtime audience – always a downer for comedy – that meant some of the material ended up falling in-between being funny and being preachy.

While some changes have been made to the show to reflect the publication of the Leveson report and various legal proceedings, I wonder whether in the months ahead the show will need further updates to reflect how newspapers are adapting (or not) to tighter regulation?

If you want to explore the messed up world of tabloid journalism, check out Rich Peppiatt’s show as One Rogue Reporter tours the UK. http://www.rich-peppiatt.com/index.html

The Out to Lunch Arts Festival has reached its half way point - check out the programme for lots of great shows still to come.

Update - Andrew Johnston has posted a review for Culture Northern Ireland.

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs // Joe Lindsay tells the story behind the dream #otl13 #agonyecstasy

2013-01-08T22:24:00.000Z

In a welcome return to lunchtime drama, the Out to Lunch Arts Festival – in conjunction with Skewiff Theatre Company – delighted today’s packed venue with The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.

It’s not the first time Joe Lindsay has taken to the stage and put on an American accent. Back in 2009 Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival he played the role of radio shock jock Barry Champlain in Talk Radio.

In today’s one man show, Joe Lindsay stepped into the shoes of monologist Mike Daisey to tell us about the rise and fall and rise of Apple, its clay-footed boss, and the reality behind the assembly of the shiny electronic goods that dominate pockets and desks across the western world. The script was based on version 2.0 [PDF] of Mike Daisey’s original script – ie, the version with the made up bits removed – and was superbly abridged by Vittoria Cafolla.

“… to be in love with Apple is a little bit to be in love with heartbreak itself, because they break your heart, again and again ... because Steve Jobs was the master of the forced upgrade.”

Later he quipped:

“Steve Jobs was always the enemy of nostalgia. He understood that the future requires sacrifice. Steve Jobs was never afraid to knife the baby.”

The audience laughed knowingly as they remembered favourite features, functions and even products that changed (and sometimes disappeared) in the name of fruity progress.

For the next hour, Joe Lindsay flitted between the nature of geekishness, the differences between Steve Jobs and the much caricatured Steve Wozniak, boardroom tussles at the electronics giant, conditions in the Foxconn’s Chinese factory and its over-efficient manual build process that assembles Apple’s beautiful products.

“Shenzhen looks like Blade Runner threw up on itself.”

One thread of the narrative hears how Mike Daisey went to China to try to meet Foxconn workers and find out first hand about their lives. Workers who had “fought their way out of villages to make a better life for themselves in the city” found themselves employed on production lines for 12 to 18 hours a day assembling Apple’s beautiful products before bedding down in company dorms. Yet nets had to be erected to catch jumpers wanting to kill themselves by suicide.

Joe Lindsay is tall and gangily, and throughout the performance was dressed in a white shirt and black jeans. Yet even when seated he had presence on the sparse Black Box stage. His hand gestures and way he held his arms was very Jobs-esque. While the sweary tale was told from the perspective of Mike Daisey, each character mentioned had been given their own individual visual personality and auditory palette.

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is a play that challenges its audience about the impact of the technology they hold so dear. The play highlights how the flawed personality and incredible drive of Jobs created a company that was commercially successfully, yet required thousands of far away labourers to pay a heavy price for consumers’ shiny wares.

The play finished with the lines:

“Today we are jailbreakers. Today we are free. Help spread the virus.”

The play isn’t without hope. Apple have finally started to pay more attention to conditions in their factories. Their market presence and strength means that they can impose (improved) changes to working conditions on their suppliers. And their power may even extend to improve conditions in the manufacturing industry in general: bringing a little more humanity to the lives of hundreds of thousands of other workers on other company’s production lines.

Apple’s recent moves to bring some product manufacturing and assembly back to North America may also change their worldwide business practices as workers will be able to speak out much more readily and be closer to consumers, bloggers and journalists.

But next time you reach into your pocket to lift your phone, boot up your slim line laptop, or use a scroll wheel to change the song on your MP3 player, spare a thought for the human sacrifice behind the device your touching.

A testing piece of theatre, expertly performed to a packed audience.