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“NO MATTER WHAT the mix is and how long people have been outside of Ireland, you ask them who are they and they’ll tell you they’re Irish,” says Lorraine Maher, creative director of the #IamIrish exhibition that opened last week at Axis Arts Centre Ballymun.
The exhibition explores the issue of Irish identity through the experiences of Irish people of mixed heritage in an attempt to “challenge perceptions of what it looks like to be Irish” and demonstrate the diversity of Irish people.
The exhibition first opened in October 2016 at the London Irish Centre, with funding from the Irish Embassy. Its success has now brought it across the sea to Dublin as part of the celebration of Black History Month 2017, with funding from the British Council and the Dublin City Arts Office.
Maher says it is “a powerful and symbolic opportunity to unite these celebrations of Black and Irish heritage and put Ireland’s long history of dual heritage firmly into focus”.
After its opening in London, Maher was inundated by people online who told her that she was telling their story, many with different varieties of mixed-Irish heritages.
“When I first did it, the story was about being black and Irish,” Maher tells TheJournal.ie. “But that’s really expanded because I’ve met people who are Chinese and Irish, Asian and Irish, Iranian and Irish, people from all over.”
And though different from her original intention, Maher began to see similarities in each person’s story.
“The narrative seems to be same: of feeling very proud to be Irish but still feeling like they don’t quite fit in and I think as a society we need to be pushing that agenda more, we need to be saying more and more ‘we belong here.’”
Originally from Carrick-on-Suir in Co Tipperary, Maher left Ireland for London when she was in her teens. She said growing up in Ireland, “I always knew I was different.”
But at heart, she stills feels very rooted to Ireland.
“I’m a proud Irish woman and that identity is part of who I am,” she says, herself of mixed Irish and African heritage.
“I know for lots of mixed-heritage Irish their stories began in industrial homes and their experience of being in Ireland wasn’t always the most positive one. I feel like we here championing on their behalf and opening doors for young mixed-race people to come along and to be able to say, ‘I am Irish.’”
Maher worked together with photographer Tracey Anderson to take intimate photographic studies detailing the experiences of mixed race Irish people living in the UK. With the Dublin opening, the portraits now include mixed-heritage Irish people living in Ireland who reached out to Maher after the initial London showing.
Ranging in age, gender and mixed ethnicity, the photographs tell the stories of each individual and look into the roots and identity issues centered around Ireland and ‘Irishness’.
The subjects in the photographs researched their family history and family crests as part of the project and a snapshot of their stories will hang alongside their photographs.
“Conversations on diversity, heritage and identity have certainly increased and improved in Ireland in recent years, but they don’t always translate in daily life,” says Niamh Ní Chonchubhair, programme manager of Axis Ballymun.
“Visibility is key here. Often, what we’re seeing on our screens, stages, billboards or walls isn’t reflecting what our communities look like. People like Lorraine have done so much to shine a light on the broader spectrum of Irish identity.”
Niamh says that the exhibition is a stimulus for a conversation about identity, race, culture and heritage and to help the conversation go further, Axis and Lorraine have developed a series of creative engagements.
Schools and community groups have been invited to participate in workshops and talks with Maher, and the Axis theatre will host a panel discussion, ‘“I Am Irish” a conversation’, on Wednesday 25 October at 6.30pm.
For Maher, the Dublin opening of the exhibit enables more stories to be told.
“It’s really unfolding,” she says. “People are speaking out and wanting to be counted.”
The exhibition will be at the Axis Arts Centre, Ballymun till 31 October, Monday to Friday 10am to 8pm. Tickets to the panel dicussion are free and can be booked here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/iamirish-a-conversation-tickets-36145797052
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Like slurry pits and breweries I suppose?
http://www.bim.ie/training/safetytraining/. Would this not be a matter for the Irish Sea Fisheries Board training courses. If it was a construction site issue, it would be addressed in a Safe Pass day course. Surely it’s mandatory to do it before going onto a ship.
Although I suppose it could be an oderless hidden killer, training might not fix it.
There should be *free* mandatory day courses for farmers as well every two years say.
Thats like the mandatory one day course that all bus and lorry drivers must do every year. At a cost to themselves of course.
You have to do if for the ‘cert’. But as a mate said: “Loada lads, half of them without a word of english, sitting in a class for a day, getting a safety cert for something they are not even tested in afterwards. What could go wrong?”
We like our ‘courses’ in Ireland so we do. These certs keep trainers in jobs and officialdom get to pretend they are doing something proactive. Imagine a safety course with no theory or practice test at the end??? Just pay the money and get the cert and sure now its all cushdy
I would have thought that all boats/ ships would have some form of gas detection or portable detectors aboard? Considering the amount of confined spaces on them. You can buy a single gas detector calibrated for Hydrogen Cyanide which is cross sensitive to Hydrogen sulphide which are two of the three gases that the two crewmen were overcome by. A single gas instrument would cost a few hundred euro, which is a lot cheaper than a funeral. RIP to the Crewmen.
For the first responders out there especially those championing the useless Eircode. None of our harbours or quays have an Eircode and never will. Pat Rabbittes billing & taxing code will mean delsys for these types of accidents because better GPS based location codes are available. Welcome to Ireland where merit plays second fiddle to Labour political strokes.
Most quays and harbours are marked on maps and are usually located by the sea. Pretty sure 999 know where they are.
Don’t mind him Kev, any excuse for a rant about Eircodes. It’s a wonder the fool isn’t on about a missing Eircode on the Apple money too………damn sure if anyone dials 999 and says Killybegs quay or Kilmore Quay, or cliffs of Moher then they will have the intelligence to know.
Plenty of minor quays & harbours around the country & weren’t National Ambulance Service unable to find Wexford Quay six months ago. But hey lets settle for mediocrity… It’s what we do.
Let me guess loc8 codes would solve the problem.
Good guess…
So what your saying Get Lost, is that since the foundation of the state that emergency services have been unable to find beaches, quays, cliffs, harbours. People must be dying in their droves at these locations for the want of guided assistance. Your stubborn, outdated, ignorant rant is a pathetic insult to the work of the Coastguard, Lifeboat volunteers (God bless their bravery and commitment) and all the state emergency services who do so much. After months of you shoehorning your agenda into everything here on the Journal I really wish you would do exactly as your name implies and, GET LOST.
Anthony this is not about the emergency services finding places. This is about the public being able to accurately able to report the position of a casualty to the emergency services. We had, and still have the opportunity too introduce a code that can help with that.
Small story for you. October last year while out on a family cycle wife had an accident on a main road and ended up unresponsive. I asked a passerby to call 999 but the passerby didn’t know where we were to tell the operator. Now ECAS can take a Loc8code but NAS do not.
The woman passed here phone to me and i had by that time already used the Point8 app got generate a Loc8code with 6m accuracy buy by the time the phone had been passed to me the call had switched from ECAS to NAS.
Thinking i was still on to ECAS i called out the Loc8 code using the phonetic alphabet giving a quick and precise location. NAS operator said to me “Where did you get that? Google???” i responded that it was a Loc8 code and he said “we don’t use them”
So i responded that we were approximately 2km north of lucan on the Clonee road. NAS operator said sorry I don’t know where that is, WHAT COUNTY ARE YOU IN.
Eircode cannot help in this scenario repeated many times a day all over the country. If you cannot see the value of Loc8 code in this scenario you are a moron.
Ultimately we have a situation where the Department of Communication is hindering rapid access to causalities with their protectionist agenda towards the UNTESTED and half baked Eircode political postcode.
Also Vodafone had a serious outage yesterday so their data network was down. This means for anybody on the Vodafone network EIRCODE was totally unusable….enjoy.
First, and most importantly, I sincerely hope that your wife has made a full recovery from her injury. It obviously has had a deep and frightening effect upon you as it would with anyone.
I certainly see and understand your point.
Speaking as a former member of the rural emergency services, we trained and studied our butts off learning our area and in rural Ireland we have so many Gurteens and Newtowns and small unheard of towns lands. The 999 controllers are so expert at gathering information from panicked and frightened callers. They relay the often scant info to the crews and the crews know from our training and dedication, who, where and most importantly how quickly to get to the incident. Oversight from Government and EU showed that our response times and incident locating ability before Loc8 or Eircode were to be commended. We did often take GPS coordinates too. No system is perfect even the UKs postcode is flawed some 30 or more years into it.
However, in this tragic story Eircode or any other locating media is not mentioned, nor was there a difficulty locating the casualties location I believe.
Thanks Anthony. Suspected broken ribs and a bit dazed. She was unresponsive because she was badly winded. I managed to get her back on her bike and through a park to a retained fireman buddy who looked after her as she went into shock and i went to get the car to collect the kids 3 & 5 who were with us. 5 year old was distraught as his mammy crashed trying to avoid him and at one point he thought she was dead. Now my fireman buddy is actually the person who came up with the name GetLostEircodes and he also designed the logo. He also told me of 2 incidents last year in the park we had just traversed. One where a man jad just had a heart attack and emergency services couldn’t find him…he died. The other some teenagers had broken into a skateboard park after hours and had fallen badly breaking his collar bone in such a way as to nearly bleed to death.. again emergency services had great difficulty finding him. Gary Delaneys Loc8codes can be put on existing signs in parks or on posts on waymarked trails such as wicklow way, mayo greenway or even canals. More tech savvy can use their smartphone. Loc8 is tried tested and proven and is used by disaster planners for that reason. It was for example used to close off roads during the Manx Air crash. Don’t for one minute think that Rabbitte, White, Naughten or the department have any interest in assisting emergency services who were never consulted at all on Eircode. DCENR have been actively trying to scupper Gary since 2010 and we are all the poorer as a result. My point in this story is there are hundreds of minor harbours, quays and jettys on both our coastal & inland waterways and they will never get an Eircode. A simple Loc8code on a Quay wall or fence post will identify the location accurately saving valuable time. DCENR are now promoting app with non hierarchical random What3Words from UK…anybody but Loc8.
Yes, Glad it was not a very serious injury. Scary one especially as you had young children to manage too, as I said I fully understand where your coming from.
And agree!
Loc8 is superior as long as one has a device that’s working etc. It’s a good system and I suspect that the Eircode was well in play and probably deals done with vested interests before Loc8. They had been rattling on about Eircode in the late 80′s. Using inferior or not using alternative information sources or being open to using better information in emergency situations is criminal.
This article is misleading the crewmen Rip died because of refrigeration gas, there was a fault in the refrigeration system, gas had leaked & do to the boat being moored for a period of time it had settled into the confined space, at the bottom of the fish hold tank. as the crew men climbed down he entered an area with poisonous gas & NO OXYGEN. The second crewman tried to safe him but was also overcome, A regrettable accident & very rare due to the high standard of maintenance & training . Crews are trained about fumes in confined space from engines etc but they are detectable by alarms & also smell, this was in a tank that is usually filled with sea water so normal alarms/ detector would not work as they would need to be salt waterproof they could not detect gases.. Also it if very very rare that refrigeration gases leaks & even rarer that it would find it’s way to a tank.RIP
Confined space entry training for all spaces not considered a normal place of work should be provided to workers, this type of accident happens quite a bit unfortunately
How very sad is that!!
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