General Collections highlights

(Another) Beat Lantern Parade

Will the Beat Initiative be able to bring a large number of people in the community together to perform artistically on a cold winter's evening on the streets of Belfast? Northern Visions went along to the Beat Ini...

A Century Later: Victims & Survivors in Northern Ireland – A Living History

How do we remember and how should Northern Ireland remember its recent past.? With an estimated 40,000-50,000 people injured during the Troubles and 3,700 killed, Northern Irish society still cannot find consensus ...

Thomas Ward

Experiences of looking for justice

Marie Breen-Smyth the Associated Dean International at the University of Surrey talks to Thomas Ward. After being laid off from his job in London, Tommy returned to Derry to visit his family before heading back to ...

In Conversation with June Cole

June Cole talks about being one of the band of female pilots who aided the war effort during World War 2. June was born in 1921, in London and by the age of 20 she had left her work as a Red Cross nurse in order to jo...

Heritage Collections highlights

Billy Dunlop

WW2 & the trade union movement

After a pleasant childhood spent in Delaware Street on the Ravenhill Road in east Belfast, Billy entered the world of work in the post office as a telegraph messenger at a tender age, “I started at the age of 14 years...

Alfred Abolarin

Race relations in NI

Born in northern Nigeria, in Zaria, where he grew up, Alfred has lived in Northern Ireland for twenty years. It was the offer of a job, which brought Alfred to Belfast in the early 1990s. “I was offered a job in Ph...

Father Desmond Wilson

Community development in W. Belfast

Father Wilson grew up in the mixed community Ormeau Road area in south Belfast. “Belfast, to us, was an amazing place. When I was growing up I was very fortunate, I was able to go to Saint Malachys Grammar School a...

Joe O Donnell

Short Strand community development

Reflecting on the housing conditions of his youth, Joe O Donnell explains, “Conditions were all very similar in that they were terrible. Most of the small two bedroom terraced houses in all of the working class areas ...