Corrymeela

Baroness O’Loan reflecting on the foundations required to build peace

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on August 3, 2015, 11:12 am

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Sunday afternoon wasn’t Baroness O’Loan’s first visit to Corrymeela. When setting up the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, she brought staff up to Ballycastle to talk through how they would ensure that their own backgrounds and experiences would not hamper the impartiality of the office and it’s investigations. She began her address speaking about being “lost in the wrong territory” while driving around Northern Ireland without a map in the car during the Troubles. She reckoned it’s a concept that …

Cllr Julie-Anne Corr Johnston’s perspective on 2015 loyalism

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on August 1, 2015, 10:44 pm

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Under the title of Perspectives on Loyalism in 2015, Dave Magee had assembled a panel who unpacked their academic and personal impressions of the so-hard-to-define term ‘loyalism’ in front of a listening audience at Corrymeela’s APERTURE festival this afternoon. Sandwiched in-between academic Sophie Long [talk embedded at bottom of this post] and rapper/teacher Jun Tzu (Jonathan Hamilton), Belfast City Councillor for Oldpark, Julie-Anne Corr Johnston delivered the following address. – – – Assuming everyone has one, could I ask you …

Corrymeela celebrates its 50th birthday with Aperture festival to mark common ground & difference

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on July 8, 2015, 11:19 pm

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Few people realise that the origins of the Corrymeela Community can be traced not to the start of the Troubles – Corrymeela was actually set up before the Troubles in 1965 – but to Ray Davey’s experiences during the Second World War. The horror and suffering of Dresden impressed upon him the futility of war, violence and division. [historian and playwright Philip Orr] The Corrymeela Community is celebrating its 50th birthday by throwing open the doors at its Ballycastle centre …

John Brewer: peace threatens religion in NI; a future shared society may well be a secular one

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on June 19, 2014, 4:29 pm

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John Brewer, professor at QUB’s Institute for Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice, delivered the second annual David Stevens Memorial Lecture on Wednesday evening. A former General Secretary of the Irish Council of Churches and leader of the Corrymeela Community until his death in 2010, David Stevens had a long time interest in the interplay between religion and politics. The full text of the lecture is available. John Brewer suggested that “religious change is happening in ways that are …