Projects
The SPACE tour offered a way for young people from a Protestant area of North Belfast to engage with the effects of the conflict in Northern Ireland on their community. The tour, devised by young people from the area, took place on 1st December 2006, starting on open top buses leaving from a community centre on Crumlin Road and with local young people acting as tour guides. The SPACE 'tour' was set against recent practice in Belfast, where tourists are transported around former conflict 'hot spots' via open top bus, but rarely get off the bus and engage with local communities. In SPACE tours, a group of policy makers and interested others from Belfast were shown around the young peoples' estate, and asked to pay particular attention to the derelict buildings, unused youth and community centres and scarcity of employment opportunities for local people. In the style of the local sightseeing tours, the young tour guides were invited to be creative with the loose script and add their own jokes or personal anecdotes about the 'sights'.
As part of the project, young people also produced a video highlighting the types of community programmes they would like to see implemented in their area. The video is being used to lobby decision makers (including a showing at the N Ireland Commission for Children and Young People) and encourage other groups of young people to express their views. The project acted as an uncommon invitation to young people to speak about their needs and community in the post-conflict setting, where the agenda is now less dominated by sectarian identity. Thus, SPACE tours was linked to similar community arts work in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Newcastle, UK that have gained some of the community centre spaces that these young people are asking for from the government. The project was facilitated by community artist Gerri Moriarty, and took place as part of the Upper North Belfast Community Empowerment Project.
