Passive Archives or Storages for Action? Storytelling Projects in Northern Ireland

Abstract

In the absence of a political agreement on an overall mechanism for dealing with the past in Northern Ireland, storytelling has become a prevalent mode of addressing the legacy of violent conflict. Adopting a historiographic approach, this paper opens up two related tracks of examination: one exploring the (ideally) more comprehensive and egalitarian approach to accessing the past found in storytelling projects, understood as forms of oral history; and the other considering the process of those stories being made into records, and the dynamics of the archive. Drawing on a qualitative study of two storytelling projects in Northern Ireland, the paper argues that the stories produced there are not only subjective accounts of the past and thus sources for studies of life during conflict, but are also significantly informed by contemporary policy and funding frameworks and thus are sources for the study of the present peace process. The contested realm in which both storytelling projects and archives operate condition how they are funded, assembled, described, opened and maintained in the process of which some stories may be privileged and others marginalised or subsumed [Brown, C. (2013) Memory, identity and the archival paradigm: introduction to the special issue, Archival Science, 13, pp. 85–93]. Adopting the idea that storytelling as a form of ‘witnessing’ is also an ethico-political act [Kurasawa, F. (2009) A message in a bottle: bearing witness as a mode of transnational practice, Theory Culture Society, 26(1), pp. 92–111], the paper discusses what kind of discourses may be empowered by the online maintenance, and instant accessibility of memory in oral history archives. Crucially, the paper considers storytelling as a conduit for remembering, which is at once shaped by the absence of policies and legal frameworks, but also shapes subsequent policies to deal with the past as can be seen in the latest political accord, which includes it as a key approach.

Keywords:

• Northern Ireland
• storytelling
• oral history
• peace process

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr. Zachary Whyte and the two anonymous reviewers for all their valuable and constructive comments.

Notes

1. The SEUPB is the Special EU Programmes Body managing the programmes PEACE I, II, III, VI. These are part-funded by the European Union with further national contributions through its Structural Funds programme. The full title of PEACE III is ‘EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland and the Border Region of Ireland.’ It covered the period 2007–2013.

2. This description and analysis is based on interviews with the project management, project reports for the funding body, SEUPB, the Forthspring Website, the booklet produced and the six interviews that have been made public in their entirety on the ‘Accounts of the Conflict’ website.

3. The chronology can be accessed here: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/chron.htm.

4. Whereas the analysis of the ‘5 Decades' project is based on a wider range of ‘back office’ materials concerning the process of the project as well as the products themselves, this description and analysis is based exclusively on a ‘closed circuit’ reading of the information and materials that are made available on the ‘Border Lives’ website www.borderlives.eu.

5. ‘The International Fund for Ireland was established as an independent international organisation by the British and Irish Governments in 1986. With contributions from the United States of America, the European Union, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the total resources committed to the Fund to date amount to £713m/€895m, funding over 5,800 projects across the island of Ireland’ http://www.internationalfundforireland.com/about-the-fund.