I sat down to write on this blog on Friday but my mind was still processing information from the two days at the conference and it's only really this morning that my thought have gathered themselves. Do I really feel that there is a need for a memorial museum of conflict in Northern Ireland ? Yes I do, there are may reasons why, being a business advisor there is a strong economic reason but beyond that I think that the chaos of Northern Ireland needs some explanation both to those who live here and those who what to find out more about it. At the conference a Dr of History spoke of how he has 4 children and soon he was going to have to teach them the facts of life because Northern Ireland schools do not teach it properly
( I can vouch for this as recently my nephew who is studying Biology A level was told by the teacher when shown an anatomy picture for reproduction that this is the mans "bits and bobs", luckily for him he did put his hand up and ask "did she know it was called a penis" 10 minutes of laughter proceeded by the class room.)
The same goes for teaching contemporary NI History, there have been attempts to bring contemporary history into the curriculum but it's been pushed out, they don't want to deal with it. This leads to a vacuum there is no place that you can bring your children and explain all the different elements of the conflict in N.Ireland and get them to understand the complexity.
Secondly people in Northern Ireland need a space that they feel comfortable going into that shows their history and if they don't want to see anybody else's point of view they maybe don't have to go into other areas of the museum that show that. But perhaps over time they might be comfortable in the space and curious enough to enter from another direction and see others people perspectives. Perhaps after feeling comfortable with that they will actually go and see some more single identity museums like Free Derry Museum or the Orange Orders Museum. We have no victors in this conflict so they cannot dominate the historical perspective, what we have are many different players all with a different agenda and a different story to tell.
Thirdly there was a speaker from South Africa who spoke of how there was a generation growing up there that were calling themselves "born frees" that they were born free from apartheid and didn't want to know just wanted to get on with their lives and yet recent studies showed that within this group at collage there was a high degree of racism.
As I went to pick up my nephew at the free gathering of "son of Billy Graham" at the Odyssey in Belfast who had gone out of curiously, there were hundreds of buses bringing young people from all over NI to hear him preach, they were part of Northern Ireland' s not quite born free but to use a good Norn Ireland term "bred and buttered" free. Free of bombing, free of internment, free of searching your bag before going into a shop, free of bombs, shootings, free of so many things and yet still constrained by the same influences that I grew up with 20 years before of Church, family history, location, schooling, friends, media, housing, opportunity or lack of it.
The structures are still there and so the attitudes with prevail unless a museum starts to help question the mindset.
Healing through remembering are involved in lots of different elements of this discussion they have supported 3 films on during the Belfast Film festival . Memory Truth and Transition a series of film screenings and discussions dealing with the past and the challenges of Transition.
Full programme of events on www.belfastfilmfestival.org
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