Toolkit

Belfast Somme 100 was a programme of commemorative events for the 100th anniversary of the Somme in Belfast in 2016. It included events under various genres such as Arts, Community, History, Lectures and Film. The programme looked at the personalities and stories associated with the battle and mark its place in the contemporary social and political history of Northern Ireland and pre-partition Ireland. 

The project was organised by Sheehy Skeffington School in collaboration with Soma festival group, Gallery of Photography Ireland, Castlewellan Inter Church Forum and the Centre for Contemporary Christianity.

In collaboration with National Museums Northern Ireland (NMNI), the ‘Remembering 1916: Your Stories’ exhibition is one of the most significant outputs produced by the ‘Living Legacies 1914-18’ WW1 public engagement centre. Exploring the significance of the centenary of 1916, the exhibition divided into four main sections – ‘The Easter Rising’, ‘The Battle of the Somme’, ‘War and Society’ and ‘Legacy’.

On the Brink: The Politics of Conflict 1914-1916 was a three year Museum services-led community outreach project (April 2014 to March 2017).

The North West Peace III Partnership comprising Derry City Council, Strabane District Council and Omagh District Council have developed a Decade of Commemorations programme with three key strands: A travelling exhibition, a musical drama, and a series of workshops were developed as the partnership was keen to deliver something that everyone could take part in.

Tonagh Ladies Group (TLG) created a book based on their interaction with Easter 1916 history. 

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland is a division within the Department for Communities. It houses a wealth of archive material relating to the Decade of Centenaries. Our ambition was to make available, engage and publicise these rich resources to mark the various centenaries. Starting in 2011, when we loaned a copy of a page of Ulster Covenant signatories to a CRC launch event at Ulster Museum, PRONI has continued to deliver a programme of activities and events relating to the Decade.

The Fellowship of Messines Association created a project for the Decade that sought to explore themes related to common history, conflict resolution and personal development. Specifically, the emphasis on a common and shared history was designed to recruit a diverse range of individuals from an extremely wide political and cultural spectrum to engage in dialogue together.

The Creative Centenaries outreach programme saw 5,276 young people and adults engaging with heritage through digital creativity and the latest technologies. A wide-ranging programme inspired learning about heritage using a variety of educational resources – iBooks, animations, graphic novels, VR stories – and workshop formats.

One hundred years on from 8 February 1912, an audience at St Mary’s University, Belfast watched a dramatic reconstruction
of Winston Churchill’s famous vision of self-government for Ireland. 

The project was initiated by the Trustees of the Churches Trust, who are the leaders in the North West area of the Catholic Church, Church of Ireland, Methodist Church, and Presbyterian Church. The aim was to bring young people and schools together for a positive learning and commemoration experience. The project involved 12 schools (four from Donegal and eight from Derry /Londonderry), involving 70 pupils, and 18 teaching staff.

The Centenaries project delivered more than 100 events and performances during 2016, reaching audiences of more than 20,000 and working with multiple partners including Kabosh, Belfast Book Festival, Somme 100, Ulster Museum, Tower Museum, Film Hub NI and Live Music Now. The majority of events were free or low cost to encourage participation.

Connection & Division brings together collections acquired by Derry City Council Heritage & Museum Service, the Inniskillings Museum and Fermanagh County Museum Service.

The 6th Connaught Rangers Research Project was formed by a group of people who had an interest in issues related to Irish nationalism and WWI. Some of those group members had family relatives who had enlisted, along with hundreds of others from the Falls Road area, in the Connaught Rangers Regiment at the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914

Through archaeological techniques and working with professional archaeologists, the Ballykinler Community Excavation Project drew together community groups to study the remains of a WW1 training camp in County Down. 

To mark the centenary of the Battle of Messines, the Irish and UK governments delivered a joint commemoration at the Island of Ireland Peace Park in Belgium.

The period 2012 -2023 marks a number of significant political events which have shaped the sense of British and Irish identity in the 20th century. The Community Relations Council (CRC) and the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) joined together for a series of lectures and events with an accompanying website to stimulate a conversation about what it means to remember in public space while realising there needs to be a contextualisation and discussion about how we remember periods and events and what the historic record tells us. 

This cross-community project aimed to attract non-visiting communities from unionist and nationalist areas in order to explore WW1.

The Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme was the official Irish State programme to commemorate the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising and to facilitate reflection, reconciliation, analysis and debate and an active imagining of our future. 

Peace Studies is a four-year project led by Fermanagh County Museum, looking back at the First World War in the context of 2014-2018, which has engaged over 100 students.

The Community Relations Council and Heritage Lottery Fund organised the first 'Remembering the Future’ conference in March 2011 attend by over 250 representatives of governments, departments, agencies, councils and groups.  

As part of a UK Government First World War Centenary campaign, commemorative paving stones are being laid at the birth places of every Victoria Cross (VC) recipient of the First World War. These commemorative paving stones are being laid over a period of four years from 2014 until 2018, and provide a lasting legacy in remembrance of those who gave their lives in the First World War.

The Living Legacies 1914-18 WW1 public engagement centre was set up in 2014 and as part of the co-production and public engagement brief from our funders (the Arts and Humanities Research Council), the centre undertook a series of public roadshow events in conjunction with Libraries NI.

One History Many Stories was a very new concept of looking at the period 1912 - 1922 through a shared and inclusive lens. The events themselves were risk taking in the fact that they tried to bring multiple perspectives to a particular period of history that for a very long time was contested.

At the beginning of the Decades of Centenaries commemorations in 2012, there was a recognition amongst the research staff in the Irish Linen Centre & Lisburn Museum that while there was a good understanding of the contribution of Lisburn’s protestant population to the Great War (1914-18), there was little known about the role the town’s Catholics played in the conflict.

This is a guide which sets out five steps for history teachers to use or adapt to help students understand how the military history of WWI relates to their area. The briefing is based on the book Belfast Boys: How Unionists and Nationalists Fought and Died Together in the First World War (Continuum, 2009) which includes the stories of the 16th (Irish) Division which recruited in the Falls, and the 36th (Ulster) Division which recruited in the Shankill. 

During the centennial years, from 2014 through to 2018, a project named The Poppy and the Lily has been delivered at a wide range of venues. At its core is the desire to enable people to learn more about the origins and purpose of two of the most significant commemorative symbols in our divided society. We also wish to provide an environment in which frank conversation can take place and an often difficult subject can be addressed without rancour. 

Rural Community network (RCN), in conjunction with independent consultant Craig Barr, developed a new OCN level 3 programme called ‘Understanding Commemorations’.

The Unionist Centenary Committee was established in 2010 to take forward a ‘Decade of Unionist Centenaries’.

Halfway House is a one act play by Contemporary Christianity, a Belfast-based organisation that, among many other things, seeks to promote shared understanding through the Arts. The author of the play is Philip Orr a historian of the First World War who has delivered community projects on history and identity. 

Paths to Commemoration is a project aimed at devising ways of publicly marking significant historic events that can include everybody. It is funded by the PEACE III Programme run by Sligo County Council on behalf of Sligo Peace & Reconciliation Partnership Committee.

This exhibition explored the changing lives of women during the early 20th Century when women began to break free from the restraints of society and move into the world of politics, work and medicine. 

‘We Were Brothers’ is a project comprised of a play with accompanying book, DVD, website and school/community outreach programmes which focuses on the shared history of nationalists and unionists who fought together in the British uniform during WWI. 

The project was funded by the CRC to produce a resource to encourage secondary school students (and others) to address the sensitive history of the 1912-22 decade in ways which help both to better understand the events in their historical context and to engage with their centenary commemoration in the present. While directed at formal education, the material should also be valuable to educators in the community.

The Box was a premiere theatre production that brought to life the discovered archive of Olive Swanzy, a nurse from County Down who served as a medic on the front lines of WWI. 

One History Many Stories was a very new concept of looking at the period 1912 - 1922 through a shared and inclusive lens. The events themselves were risk taking in the fact that they tried to bring multiple perspectives to a particular period of history that for a very long time was contested.

Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE) developed this project as a resource and support to teachers and students hoping to mark the Decade of Anniversaries. 

The Tower Museum created an exhibition commemorating the centenary of the sinking of the Laurentic. The famous gold ship, which now lies at the bottom of Lough Swilly, was sunk by German mines from a U-boat on the 25th January 1917. The story of its sinking, its survivors, and the hunt for the 43 tonnes of gold on board to pay for munitions during the First World War has captured the imagination of generations of researchers, historians and divers since.

The Nerve Centre's Creative Centenaries project, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Community Relations Council, delivered an ambitious programme of exhibitions, events and outreach throughout 2016 in response to key anniversaries. 

This short original film is about Laura Gailey, the only woman named on the War Memorial in the Diamond in Derry/Londonderry. Laura Gailey was a resident of the city who became a volunteer nurse tending the war-wounded in Liverpool during WWI. 

The Maidens’ City: A ‘Herstory’ of the Walled City (the Herstory Tour) tells the largely hidden history of women of Derry/Londonderry, beginning with a meeting of the local Suffragettes in the Guildhall 100 years ago. 

This project focused on the First World War, and in particular the Battle of Messines. It centres on the relationship between Private John Meeke a local Orangeman from Benvarden and Major William Redmond who was a famous nationalist MP. Focusing on this unique relationship has helped to define this project.

Cultural Fusions is an arts and cultural programme designed through Mid-Antrim Museums Service and Causeway Museum Service across the North East council areas for PEACE III objectives of sharing, expression and experience of different cultures. The programme has had several relevant projects worth noting.

Artsekta have been involved in three separate projects focussing on the past, including The Belfast Bayeux, Sanskriti and Belfast Suitcase Stories.

Over the period of the Decade of Anniversaries, Belfast City Council has developed a programme that each year emphasises aspects that marks events of that particular year that shaped Northern Ireland and Ireland a century ago.

Shared Education was a cross community visit involving St Mary’s Primary School Kircubbin and Victoria Primary School Ballyhalbert, funded by Council Good Relations Programme and The Executive Office. The P7 classes took part in a shared history/ shared educational project to the Belgium and French battlefields. The young people had the opportunity to build friendships with others from a different religious background while being able to see at first-hand how all sides of the divide from Northern Ireland and other countries fought side by side during WWI. 

Also known as known as ‘The Shipyard Church,’ Westbourne Presbyterian Church on the Newtownards Road in East Belfast was the biggest signing centre for the Ulster Covenant in 1912 after Belfast City Hall.

Belfast City Council's programme around 1916 involved a series of Civic Events and a large exhibition which was situated in the City Hall from March - September 1916. Events were delivered on the Lost Lives of the Battle of the Somme, the Shipwrecks from the Battle of Jutland, the Women from the Easter Rising and one of the rooms in City Hall was turned into a cinema for the night, to screen the film “The Battle of the Somme”.

‘This is What We Sang’ was accompanied by an exhibition and a companion publication, and was performed by The Kabosh Theatre Company in the Belfast Synagogue as part of the Belfast Festival. 

This project is developing an online digital resource for teachers to access and a programme of support and training for teachers to enable them to utilise it effectively with students at Key Stage 3 in Northern Ireland and students in transfer year in the Border Counties.

Since 2013 Donegal County Museum has worked in association with individuals, groups and organisations to commemorate the events which impacted the lives of those living in Donegal 100 years ago. In 2012 the Museum worked with the Thiepval Memorial Loyal Orange Lodge to organise an exhibition on the story of the Ulster Covenant in Donegal. In 2014 the Museum developed an exhibition on Donegal and World War I.

Entwined Histories began in 2012 with a project to commemorate the signing of the Ulster Covenant.  Following the success of this pilot, Co-operation Ireland continued the series, with the support of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through the reconciliation fund, with a further seven projects. 

The Fellowship of Messines Association was formed in May 2002, by a diverse range of individuals from Loyalist, Republican and Trade Union backgrounds united in their realisation of the necessity to confront sectarianism in our society as a necessary means to realistic peace building.