Flags

Union Jack flags, Moorgate Street in East Belfast

Irish Tricolor flags in Derry City Cemetery

"There is no action without an equal but opposite reaction... It was early morning on an August Sunday in 2003 and there were bonfires being built to commemorate the republican men who were interned in the 1970s. Internment-remembering bonfires burn the Union Flag in an equal but opposite reaction to the Boyne-remembering bonfires burning the Irish Tricolour. It felt as predictable as the seasons and as dependable. The only motion is on an axis of its own." -- from "Welcome to Belfast," a prose poem by Padraig O Tuama.

Flags weigh heavy on Belfast and Derry. In the summer, particularly in Belfast, you pass through neighborhoods draped in them. They set a tone for pedestrians. You might feel they are beautiful flapping in the breeze, or you may be intimidated. Flags ask you to pick a side. If they are the Irish Tricolor and the Union Jack, they will rarely be seen together, except in some sort of conflict.

At NHA, we are struggling with how to introduce this foreign but meaningful conflict in a way that invites inquiry. How do we reveal just enough to invite questions, without revealing so much that the process of student-led education is stifled? We are thinking maybe the questions should start by looking at the flags themselves, and also looking at Padraig O Tuama's prose poem "Welcome to Belfast," that relates the experience of arrival in Belfast through observation of its young citizens' relationship to those flags. 

Our new first lesson will begin with these details and the questions they raise: What is internment? What is the Boyne? Why are flags being burnt? Why are flags being protected?

We will also use photographic images taken and explained by children (acquired at the Wave Trauma Centre in Belfast) in a gallery walk that we hope will make our students feel the way the symbolism of the conflict makes people feel in the streets of Northern Ireland's cities. This lesson may also include images of everyday objects transformed by the "Troubles" (acquired from Healing Through Remembering, also in Belfast). 

We hope that questions will be raised and feelings will be felt that can be furthered as they learn more in future lessons. But the first step is to feel what the conflict feels like, and to start to question how it came to be so.