Abstract
In May 2016, Epic Ireland, a new ‘National’ Diaspora Centre, opened in Dublin. That move increased pressure to establish a separate ‘National Diaspora Centre’ in Northern Ireland too. The contention of this chapter is that the opportunity to create on the island of Ireland one ‘cross-border’ Diaspora Centre, rather than two separate ‘National’ Diaspora Centres, is in danger of being lost to the detriment of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement 1998. It reviews the story of this development, setting it within the history of the emergence of ‘national’ cultural institutions in Ireland (North and South) since Partition. Finally, it is argued that, not least for addressing properly the problem of ‘dealing with the past’, one ‘cross-border’ (Irish and British) ‘diaspora-related’ institution is still needed in Ireland.
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Notes
- 1.
“Diaspora Museum is virtually set to open”, Sunday Times, 13 March 2016; “An Irish Expat’s Epic Endeavour”, Irish Times, 30 April 2016; “‘Story of 70 Million Irish’ told at new Dublin visitor centre: Epic Ireland in CHQ building curated by company behind Titanic Belfast”, Irish Times, 2 June 2016.
- 2.
Colum Sands, sung to the tune of The Wark O’ The Weavers, on his first solo album Unapproved Road (1981).
- 3.
The Feasibility Study was prepared for Fáilte Ireland by Event Communications, London, with CHL Consulting Group, Dublin.
- 4.
The institutional development of academic diaspora studies on the island of Ireland may be traced back to the establishment of the Irish Centre for Migration Studies at University College Cork, 1997, and the Centre for Migration Studies (now Mellon Centre) at the Ulster American Folk Park, Omagh, Co. Tyrone in 1998. On the meaning of the term ‘diaspora’, to include not only forced but also voluntary migration, see Akenson (1997) and Fitzgerald and Lambkin (2008: 257–9).
- 5.
Ironically, the first political leader in Ireland to demonstrate commitment to “cherishing the diaspora” (although he did not use those terms) was the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Basil Brooke. In 1956, he was instrumental in establishing the Ulster-Scot Historical Society (now the Ulster Historical Foundation), attached to PRONI, because “he had been so impressed with the reception he had received from the descendants of Ulster emigrants he had met on his visits to North America, that he resolved to repay their support” (UHF 2007: 7).
- 6.
Opening Horizons: A New Vision for the Future, launched 18 May 2000, Ulster Museum, Belfast, by Loyd Grossman.
- 7.
Epic Ireland website at: http://chq.ie/epic-ireland/ (accessed 19 Dec. 2016).
- 8.
The parallel issue of how best to provide a ‘national’ stadium for each major sport in Ireland has been similarly fraught. In 2008, the plan to build a £14m national sports stadium on the site of the Maze prison in Northern Ireland was cancelled (McDonald 2008).
- 9.
The ‘special’ partnership of the State with the Catholic Church was expressed in deleted article (44.1.2): “The State recognises the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens.”
- 10.
Northern Irish Connections may be regarded as an example of what The Economist has called “the magic of diasporas” (The Economist, 18–25 Nov. 2011). Another example is the inaugural Irish Diaspora Award, given by the Irish Film and Television Academy to Roma Downey, who is from Co. Derry, “for her achievements as an Irish artist abroad”; the award was welcomed by the Republic’s minister for diaspora affairs, Jimmy Deenihan (Irish News, 14 Mar. 2016).
- 11.
Estyn Evans arrived in Northern Ireland in 1928 to establish the new Department of Geography at Queen’s University, Belfast, and went on to establish the Departments of Archaeology (1948) and Social Anthropology (1973), and the Institute of Irish Studies (1965) (Graham 1994: 183–4).
- 12.
In 2013, the main contribution of the Irish National Famine Museum to The Gathering was a “Welcoming Home the Great Famine Diaspora” programme, with a particular focus on “Gathering the Roscommon emigrants stories.” See: http://www.strokestownpark.ie/whats-on/the-gathering (accessed 12 Feb. 2016). The National Famine Commemoration Day (Lá Cuimhneacháin Náisiúnta an Ghorta Mhóir), organised in a different place each year by the Dublin government since 2008, was held north of the Border for the first time in 2015, in Newry.
- 13.
NIPR, see http://www.nibooks.org/
- 14.
The ‘Whose Nation?’ question is famously asked and answered in James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922): “‘What is your nation if I may ask?’ says the Citizen. ‘Ireland,’ says Bloom. ‘I was born here. Ireland.’”
- 15.
The Cradle of Humankind site, near Johannesburg, South Africa, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999.
- 16.
A major weakness of Epic Ireland is the almost total absence of any identification of sites in the homeland at parish, townland, or street level.
- 17.
A major weakness of Epic Ireland is the almost total absence of attention to parish, townland, or street level and although it includes a digital display mapping group trajectories of migration from Ireland over time, mapping is generally absent, even in the Souvenir Guide (Costecalde 2016).
- 18.
There are six North South Bodies which operate on an all-island basis, see: http://www.northsouthministerialcouncil.org/index/north-south-implementation-bodies.htm (accessed 19 Dec. 2016). On the potential for developing cross-border service provision, see Ó Caoindealbháin and Clarke (2012).
- 19.
Part One of four special magazines on “Ireland’s spectacular new museum”, entitled Epic: The Irish Emigration Museum, was published in the Irish Independent newspaper on 17 Feb. 2017.
- 20.
The author is grateful to colleagues and friends for comments and suggestions, especially Patrick Fitzgerald, Sir Peter Froggatt, Sophie Henderson, Piaras Mac Éinrí, John Gilmour, Emily Mark-Fitzgerald, Michael Pierse, William Roulston, Colum Sands, Johanne Devlin Trew, George Woodman, and Kay Muhr.
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Lambkin, B. (2018). The Need for a “National“ Diaspora Centre in Ireland. In: Devlin Trew, J., Pierse, M. (eds) Rethinking the Irish Diaspora. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40784-5_4
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