Mr Ulster
Coming to terms with our interdependencies #GFA20
by Allan LEONARD
10 April 2018
On the 20th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, it is easy to neglect the peace process that preceded it. My reference point is the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, because I learned about the efforts of then Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald the year before, from a magazine article that I read in a local library in my rural hometown in Ohio. I knew then that what he was working on was important.
Using our past better: Launch of Divided Society
by Allan LEONARD for Shared Future News
22 January 2018
Twenty and two years in the making, the Linen Hall Library launched its website, Divided Society, which features documentary material in its Northern Ireland Political Collection, of the peace process during the 1990s, with over 500 journal titles available.
Photo Detectives: An exhibition of community-researched Irish photo history
by Allan LEONARD
6 January 2018
Photo Detectives is an exhibition by the National Library of Ireland (NLI) at its National Photographic Archive site in Dublin, of a set of archive images that online Flickr users have assisted with research and providing illuminating further information.
Rewrite our future! Washington Ireland Program Thanksgiving Ball 2017
by Allan LEONARD for Shared Future News
25 November 2017
The Thanksgiving Ball has become an annual tradition of the Washington Ireland Program, held at this time of year in recognition of the generosity of families in America who host visiting participants. Tonight’s event, with several hundred attending at the Hilton Hotel in Belfast, took on an added significance with the award recognition of Norman Houston and Nuala McAllister.
Mr Turner’s apples
by Allan LEONARD
27 September 2017
The Allison Collection held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) consists of about 1,550 photographs and 34 volumes from Allison Photographic Studios between circa 1900 and 1950. The studios were established by Herbert Thackwray Allison, who came to Ireland in 1881 with his brother. After starting in Belfast, they expanded with county branches in Dundalk, Armagh, Newry, and Warrenpoint. His son, Herbert Thackwray Jr, ended up managing the Armagh studio in 1903, where he remained for almost 50 years; his father ran the Newry and Warrenpoint studies.
Exhibition launch: “We Lived It: The Social Impact of the Troubles” @TheLinenHall
by Allan LEONARD for Shared Future News
2 August 2017
The Linen Hall Library has presented the first of two exhibitions of its Divided Society digitisation and outreach project. “We Lived It: The Social Impact of the Troubles” contains artwork, imagery, ephemera, and oral history extracts from firsthand accounts of individual experiences.
Art, peace and reconciliation: In conversation with Rita DUFFY
by Allan LEONARD for Shared Future News
11 May 2017
At the last lecture in the spring series of events hosted by the Mitchell Institute of Peace at Queen’s University Belfast, artist Rita Duffy conversed with Professor Fiona Magowan, on how she has applied her creativity to help better understand the world around her.
Using art to fill in gaps of our reconciliation: DFAT Reconciliation Networking Forum
by Allan LEONARD for Shared Future News
14 December 2016
At the eleventh annual convening of a reconciliation network organised by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Ireland), an afternoon panel discussion explored the role of the arts in Northern Ireland’s reconciliation process.
Confident. Ambitious. Prosperous. Distinctive. Launch of Successful Belfast.
by Allan LEONARD for Shared Future News
27 October 2016
Walking past the students at their tabletops, working on their assignments with mock constructions at the School of Architecture at the Ulster University Belfast campus, there was no mistaking that I found the venue for the launch event for Successful Belfast, described in an advance notice by founding director of Belfast Buildings Trust, Ms Fionnuala Jay-O’Boyle, as “a city-focused think-tank”.
Transformation through collaboration: Foster
The Harri Holkeri lecture: Women, leadership and peacebuilding
by Allan LEONARD
23 May 2016
First Minister for Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster MLA, was the guest speaker at the fourth annual Harri Holkeri lecture series, on this year’s topic of “Women, leadership and peacebuilding”.
(St) Patrick deported by citizen jury
by Allan LEONARD for Shared Future News
19 March 2016
A public jury of citizens of Ireland voted to deport (Saint) Patrick, after hearing testimony in a staged hearing of his immigration application for the right to remain, at a “provocation” event by Kabosh Theatre Company at the Oh Yeah Music Centre, sponsored by the Northern Ireland Foundation as part of the Imagine! Festival of Ideas & Politics.
Launch of #CivilSocietyNetwork
by Allan LEONARD for Shared Future News
2 October 2015
Just a few days before the event, an email was sent to people across the voluntary, community and business sectors, inviting all to the launch of the Civil Society Network.