Derry Londonderry - A New Chapter The Culture Show

From the island of Iona on the west coast of Scotland, a mysterious

cargo arrives in Northern Ireland. This is Derry-Londonderry, the city

with two names and two histories, Catholic and Protestant.

Today people have come together from all over the city to celebrate the

fictional return of Colmcille, their patron saint. Looking around today,

you'd never know for decades Derry-Londonderry was a violently

divided city. When my family lived here in the

'60s and '70s it seemed like the Troubles would never end, that the

violence and hatred were here for good.

And yet here we are today, one crowd having one big celebration.

This year, Derry-Londonderry became the first ever UK City of Culture.

Over the past 12 months, poets, artists and performers have been

piling in through the 17th century city gates, the same gates that have

witnessed siege and conflict for 400 years.

Yes, this is Derry-Londonderry. But in 2013, in this UK City of Culture,

nowhere is no-go any more. But can arts and culture really end

centuries of sectarian violence and hatred?

The seventh century ring fort of Greenan Ely in Donegal is only a

stone's throw from Derry-Londonderry, and yet it's in

another country, the Republic of Ireland.

Look at this. It's so beautiful up here today in this weather. There's

nowhere more beautiful. See the shadows moving over the hills and

the gorse. This is all Donegal, part of the

Republic of Ireland. And in this direction is Derry-Londonderry,

Northern Ireland, that's part of the UK. There's a kind of invisible

porous border that you drive from one field to the next field,

suddenly you're in a different country. I think growing up in this

landscape, this kind of contested territory, it's very hard not to

have an identity crisis. The question arises about which

direction you face. This way or that way.

I grew up in Cookstown in County Tyrone, during the dark days of the

troubles and left in 1994, the year of the cease-fires. I want to see

how Derry, a city I know well, is dealing with its troubled past.

Guildhall Square, the heart of the city. We're all here to see what's

in the box that arrived earlier from Iona.

It's the centrepiece of the Return of Colmcille, the city's celebration

of its wayward patron saint. For in the box? It a secret!

The story goes that Colmcille got into a violent dispute with another

saint, thousands were killed and he was exiled to Scotland. When Frank

Cottrel Boyce, writer of the London 2012 opening ceremony, was invited

to write The return of Colmcille, he knew he'd found a new hero.

This is a divided city. We've got two very different, or very

contentious traditions, but Colmcille belongs to both. And also,

you know, from my point of view, what a fantastically rich story. A

story about revenge and you know can you do something good after you've

done something very bad, which is Colmcille's story. And an amazing

bank of beautiful images, because he's responsible for, ultimately for

the Book of Kells which I think is possibly the most beautiful thing

any human being has ever created. When he arrived on Iona, Colmcille

founded a monastery. His followers went on to write the Book of Kells

in the ninth century. It's one of the earliest masterpieces of western

calligraphy and Celtic design. It's one of the wonders of the world.

You've talked about the redemption of Colmcille, someone who had done

something bad and tried to make up for it with something good.

I can see why that applies to Derry in a lot of ways, but is it slightly

strange to pick someone who is such a man of religion and violence, two

things that Derry has maybe had enough of? But he'd had enough of

it, and moved on. You'll meet people here who are doing great work in the

council who've got quite murky pasts. So I think he's a good figure

for Derry. And also he's a man of enormous learning, man who created

enormous beauty, someone who, you know... The Roman Empire had

collapsed, Europe was plunging into this mire, and this tiny group of

men, on this remote island, set a light that brought everything back,

an amazing, amazing achievement. He's a colossal figure, and I don't

think people really appreciate that. How the Irish saved civilisation?

They really did, they really did. The people who followed Colmcille

ended up being advisers to Charlemagne and all that stuff, and

the reach of that little island is astonishing.

So this is it. The big moment, the reason we're all here.

We've made a puzzle of it, and people thought, there was lots of

phoning in and guesses about what was in the box. I was worried that

it would be an anticlimax, cos the rumour was it was going to be Dana.

Right. That would have been an anticlimax. The surprise, admittedly

lost on some of the audience, was a giant pantomime Book of Kells.

With most of us still none the wiser, the carnival monk draws a map

of the city. And mostly that was really about

getting people to walk, because during the Troubles there were

routes that you couldn't walk. Right, the idea of no-go. You know,

we're on the walls, you couldn't walk the walls.

Do you feel like you know him now? Yes. He organised the weather, after

all. I know him. Colmcille is a great cheer leader for the city of

culture. He's a patron saint to both Catholics and Protestants. But he's

actually not that saintly. But I can't forget that this is still

Derry-Londonderry, the city of two names and two stories.

What story that is depends on whether you are Catholic or

Protestant, Irish or English, a nobleman or a peasant. But one thing

everyone agrees on is it's a story of war and a story of bloodshed. And

it goes back a very long way. These walls were built 400 years ago

by English and Scottish settlers to fend off Irish insurgents who

opposed the plantation. And the struggle for the control of Ireland

has rumbled on through the centuries.

I think it's down to the right. It's either that one or the next one. No,

this is not the right way, sorry. I'm trying to find where my parents

lived in the late '60s and '70s when the conflict between Catholic

republicans and Protestant loyalists erupted violently.

Just here, in here, in this house, there's a wee shed out in the back

here where my father bred budgies and black sable rabbits, just there.

During internment, they could hear all the bin lids being bashed across

the river from the Creggan estate. This is Bogside, one of the city's

many no-go areas during the Troubles.

Here's the famous "you are now entering free Derry". And yet today

tourists come here in their coachloads to photograph the famous

republican murals. This is Bogside on January 30 1972,

a date everyone know as Bloody Sunday.

This mural painted in 1997 is based on news footage of the day.

It's a powerful piece, this way the priest is kind of cowering waving

the white hankerchief. This is Father Edward Daley, who went on to

become the Bishop of Derry. I don't know what I think about these

murals, to be honest. They're wonderful in some way and they

commemorate history. But they also commemorate events that happened 40

years ago. I'd like to see some murals celebrating the Good Friday

Agreement or 20 years of relative peace.

Many of the artists and performers in the City of Culture have been

touched, directly or indirectly, by the Troubles. I've come to Picturing

Derry, a photo exhibition that faces it head-on. Sean and Jim were young

lads in the '80s when they joined Camerawork, a community photography

project in Bogside. Sean, I think you were here on the day. Yes,

that's me there. A lot more hair. Jim took this photograph himself

during a Bloody Sunday commemorative rally in 1986. The image is black

and white, but things were very grey then. The weather seemed to be more

miserable as well. They were more hard times, more difficult times as

well. So a lot of the memories that it reawakens in me were quite sad.

But it's good now after the passage of time to revisit them. Because

they do serve as a kind of image of what we actually went through as a

people. They bear witness. Not all the photographers in the

exhibition were personally involved. It brings together work by local and

professional photographers from both sides of the sectarian divide, and

photojournalists from around the world.

Gilles Caron was a French photo journalist who travelled to Derry on

12 August 1969. The morning was quiet and peaceful.

It's strange how you can follow the narrative of that now through

Caron's photographs, this almost bucolic scene of people marching

with the rolling hills behind. Very sedate sort of elderly marchers, and

then suddenly the kind of apocalypse.

By the afternoon, this was the scene.

This would become known as the Battle of the Bogside.

The fact that she is so centred within the piece and so kind of

unaware of the photograph, and within her face you see this look of

complete and utter kind of alienation from her everyday

surroundings that within an afternoon have just exploded into

destruction. When local police were powerless to

control the riots that spread to Belfast, British Troops were brought

in. The same thing with these amazing

shots of the soldiers' faces which are in colour, and they appear to be

stripped from the war maybe. They do, and the fact that they are

wearing camouflage, looks like it is straight out of Darren Sammy. And

you can see the kind of shock in their face -- straight out of Dad's

Army. And you can see the total terror in their face. As Jim said,

those were sad times for Derry. But we are here now, and we are

talking about the Troubles is history. This has to be a sign that

we are moving on. I am going to visit the home of the apprentice

boys of Derry. The same Protestant organisation that Caron

photographed. That is some view. The river used to

cut down here. It left Marshland behind, so that is where we get the

name of Bogside. And the water for the city was kept outside the city

walls, and the Bishop drank it and said it tasted as good as brandy.

When I was growing up, the sectarian divide seemed unbridgeable, but this

new piece Ridge is helping to change that. In the foreground you can see

the Piece bridge. The two communities come together from the

east bank to the West Bank -- the peace Bridge. The two sides have

come together. Nearly 2 million people have walked across it since

it was built. The 17th century city walls were out of bounds during the

Troubles. They are free for anyone to walk now. To commemorate their

400 year anniversary, Mark-Anthony Turnage was commissioned to compose

the music for a new cantata with words by poet Paul Muldoon. It is

called At Sixes And Sevens. Doire, the druids at their core.

The sacred oak, en dair. The oak so stalwart it stands for

All we've stood for thus far. One of the things which really

fascinated me about this was the connection between the name Derry,

which is a corruption of the gay lick phrase chrome, the word for an

oak grove, the Gaelic phrase. Durability, the quality for which so

many people in Northern Ireland are devoted. Being a hard man. The poem

At Sixes And Sevens has also been reproduced in a limited edition book

with illustrations by the Belfast artist Rita Duffy. Heard drawings

engage with Muldoon's phrases. For the worshipful greyhound walk

KERS, the worshipful and of big talkers, the worshipful and on the

dole. One of the things I am interested in in song in particular,

and in poetry as well, is the extent that when one sees a repeated

phrase, a refrain, that each time one meets it it means something

slightly different. It has a slightly new charge, text any

direction. The worshipful of shirt seamers, the worshipful Company of

the faces of ill board adds, the worshipful of daydreamers, the

worshipful and of likely lads. There is a tradition in Ireland from

WB Yeats to Seamus Heaney, of poetry becoming entangled in public life.

Did Muldoon feel like he was addressing a crowd rather than a

single reader? Despite the differences in the country, from one

end of it to the other, it is still a very small place. I still think

there is a little bit of a tribal sensibility, I would say rather a

large tribal sensibility in Ireland. I think for that reason, people look

to the poets for news. During the height of the Troubles in Northern

Ireland, there were constant calls saying, couldn't you write a poem

about this? Isn't it a fine thing that most people didn't get involved

in that, particularly when at the end of the day, the positions that

were being espoused are no longer espoused by some of the

politicians, you know? At Sixes And Sevens takes on Derry-Londonderry's

history playfully with one eyebrow raised. Rita Duffy illustrated it so

beautifully and has been omissions to make her own work for the City of

Culture celebrations. I am on my way now to the city shirt factory which

is this monumental redbrick building. It is the same factory

where my mother worked in the early 70s. In 2013, Derry has been

transformed and part of that transformation is that this building

is now art galleries. Duffy's piece is installed here. It draws on a

very different history from the walls. Derry-Londonderry's wealth

was founded on fine linen. Either middle of the 19th century, it was

the largest manner that shirts in Europe. 30 redbrick factories which

once dominated the city's skyline were once filled with women.

When I stepped into Rita Duffy's installation, it felt like I had

entered a dream version of the city floor.

I have always been interested in garments and shirts and obviously,

coming from Belfast, that whole linen industry and weaving, my

mother was a weaver, my father worked in weaving machinery, so I

feel like I am part of that garment story somewhere. These shirts you

have hanging up, they catch the light beautifully. They are Derry

shirts. They are beautiful. It is nice for people to see what made

this city famous. It is a particular shirt made three fine linen and

beautifully crafted. Yes. I like the idea of responding to the space like

a pop-up museum so you would have a museum feel, a gallery feel over

there, and here you would have a sense of industry and working and

creating. There is a sewing machine sitting there, and old sewing

machine sitting threaded up for anyone who wants to have a go. I

might knock up a shirt. Maybe not knock up a shirt but you could put

in a few stitches. As with all museums, there is also the shop.

But look closer at the merchandise and you will see it has been branded

with Duffy's dry sense of humour. I like these. These are washing

powders for the city side, predominantly the Catholic area and

the Waterside, predominately Protestant. It says this poetic

laundry powder has been designed to remove the gathered stains of life.

There is something very poetic and mythological nearly about the idea

of people coming down to the shore to wash away, to cleanse will stop

to go down to the river to pray. To go down to the river to pray, to go

down to the river to wash their bloody hands.

As I travelled around the city, I saw young boys preparing to

symbolically burned the union with Britain. And here is the Loyalist

retort. In a city and country where symbols mean so much, it is said

that the can that poets and artists like Muldoon and Duffy can

renegotiate the terms of those symbols and find humour in them.

This is the fleadh. From the first time since it was founded in 1951,

it is being held north of the border and it is being held in

Derry-Londonderry. The streets are packed and alive with the sound of

guitars, flutes, fiddles and the macro. It is a big moment for the

city and a big moment for the fleadh.

The fleadh is a massive international event but in

Derry-Londonderry it is also an intimate family affair.

The competition to find the world's best musicians in every field are

fierce. For most of the 300,000 people here this week, it is about

the sheer joy of playing and listening to music.

Martin McGinnley is the editor of the local paper, the Derry Journal,

but he is also passionate about traditional Irish music. My first

fleadh was in the 1970s and they go back to 1951. It is a massive

celebration of Irish music and song. It is a great boost to the city and

great that it is coming to the north for the first time ever. But in this

city, it is not surprising that music is contentious. However, it

was not the Protestant community who objected to the fleadh coming here.

I know there was some resistance to it coming north of the border. A

group of people called dissident republicans objected that it was

happening under the umbrella of the UK City of Culture. They do not like

the UK bit. There are still a number of people who would not like that

designation UK, but that is part of life. You are not going to have

complete consensus. If fiddles and pipes are these just sound of

Catholic tradition in Derry, then flutes and lambeg drums are the

defining sound of a Protestant marching band. What about the cross

community aspect of this fleadh? That is a thing I have noticed over

the past several years that there is a conscious effort being made to

reach out to the community, the Unionist Protestant community who

would not normally be associated with traditional Irish music, to

reach out to them and give them a space for the music associated with

their tradition. I think Derry has gone further than any previously in

doing that. Before I left Derry-Londonderry, I

wanted to meet Marty Melarky. His long commitment to the City of

Culture helped to win the bid. What sort of legacy do hope will grow

from it? I think they're all sorts of legacies, in times of people's

perceptions, not just as a conflict zone or the city of the Troubles.

Young people do not even have any real memories of that. They were not

alive then. One of Marty's projects is the digital Book of Kells.

Amazingly, these kids wrote, shot and edited their own animations.

About 150 cows were used to make the Book of Kells. They are bringing

books alive, bringing them alive with movement and colour and

animation. I think with schools, the possibility of looking to the

future, future in which arts and culture is centred in their lives. I

think that is a legacy for us. This year, the City of Culture celebrated

all that is best about Northern Ireland, its resilience and humour,

its wonderful traditions of theatre, music and art, and of course,

poetry. But we are what we are. Northern Ireland has deep political

divisions which are not going away that easily. There is still the low

rumble of the same old, same old, riots and murders and bombings.

Organised crime, political skulduggery and all of that

accompany anxiety and fear. Maybe it is less than it was but still here.

It is great to see the two sides can celebrate what we have and what we

have in common. And hopefully, the more we do this, the harder it will

be to disagree so violently and viciously. Being out here on the

walls so early in the morning reminds me of a wonderful poem by

Derek Mahon. It is called fittingly, Derry Morning.

Here it began, and here at last it fades into a finite past, or seems

to. Clattering shadows what mechanically over pub and shop. A

strangely pastoral silence rules. The shining roves and murmuring

schools. For this is how the centuries work.

Two steps forward, one step