A new vision for Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland of today is unrecognisable from the NI my parents grew up in. The end of The Troubles in 1998 ushered in a more peaceful era, but also marked a shift in how the global public perceived the country. Long gone are the days of it being considered a place plagued by conflict, too dangerous to visit. Now, the region is renowned for its outstanding natural beauty and rich history and perhaps home to a people who like to drink a bit too much. Some tropes are harder to shake than others.

No industry has benefited more from this PR shift than tourism in the country. In 2011, tourism generated £640 million for the economy and by 2024 this had grown to £1.1 billion. Much has been made of the local film and TV industry’s positive effect on tourism in NI, with cultural behemoths like Game of Thrones drawing many from overseas to experience the landscape first-hand. Increasingly however, both the world of traditional crafts and the arts scene have become integral, not just in boosting tourism, but in enriching visitors’ experience and understanding of NI once they arrive.

In February of this year, I returned to live in Belfast after six years in London. I was struck by how much had changed in the city since I left. Initiatives like late night art (an evening a month where all the city’s galleries stay open late) and Vault (an organisation providing affordable studio spaces for working artists) are indicative of a new grassroots movement of art within the city.

Northern Ireland’s craft scene is of world-class quality. Katherine McDonald, director of Craft NI, says that the bespoke quality of craft offered in NI provides visitors something unique they wouldn’t find anywhere else in the world. Beyond the aesthetic appeal, craft from NI has a way of communicating something about the place that it’s made in and the people who live here.

One of those communications is about our heritage and traditions. It’s something found across Bangor artist Bob Johnston’s work. He began his practice in the heritage craft of traditional basket making. Since then, he has become a prolific willow sculpture artist. He credits the skills obtained in the early parts of his career as having given him the ‘solid knowledge base from which to experiment and evolve the craft.’ Bob has used his mastery of willow to innovate. His recent work, commissioned for the 200th anniversary of The National Gallery in London called The Triumph of Music and masterminded by artist Jeremy Deller, saw him create mummer masks inspired by 90s rave culture. Mummer masks are a centuries old Irish tradition used in performances. Bob’s work draws on this tradition whilst also being unafraid to be subversive and irreverent and to incorporate modern influences. This endearing juxtaposition between his medium and subject matter speaks to Northern Irish traditions and heritage whilst also offering an insight into the rich sense of humour people from this part of the world have.

Such communications shouldn’t be understood merely as a one way conversation, but - increasingly - as a dialogue between artists and tourists. In recent years craft workshops, where expert craftsmen impart their knowledge onto small classes, have become hugely popular amongst tourists coming to stay in NI. Liz Steele, the culture and heritage manager at Tourism NI, says that these are immersive experiences that allow tourists to connect with the place they’re visiting as well as with the local people who run them. Liz works closely with Craft NI to encourage local craftsmen and artists to understand the growing opportunity in these tourism experiences. She believes the relationship between craft and tourism will become progressively symbiotic.

Someone who understands this mutually beneficial relationship better than anyone is traditional basket-maker Louise McClean. Based just outside of Portrush, in recent years she has started to host workshops for people interested in learning more about the craft. She has just got off the back of a six week run of doing workshops every Saturday in which tickets sold out in as early as 15 minutes. She says there’s a massive tourist interest in these sorts of experiences, remarking on busloads of people from Kentucky, Norway and the Republic of Ireland arriving to her workshops. Tourism has created a whole new avenue for revenue creation for the crafts sector in NI whilst allowing them to share their passion.

Louise's work draws inspiration largely from the coast of Northern Ireland. On her daily walks on the beach, she collects found elements such as driftwood and seaweed that she incorporates into her basket designs. Again, we see craft serving to inform tourists of the deep connection felt to the landscape in NI.

When I was growing up, creativity often felt like something that was happening somewhere across the Irish sea. As a result I milked what spaces I did have access to. As a teenager I had a monthly ritual. I’d put on my most interesting outfit of the day, which always featured a musty second hand fur coat my mum would describe as ‘crawling’, and make my way to St Anne’s Square to pace the halls of The Mac Gallery. With the regularity of my visits, I’d often be visiting the same exhibition over and over again. That didn’t really matter though. The building had become symbolic for me, somewhere that itched at a scratch that wouldn’t relent. It offered promises of community and like-mindedness. The same promises I would migrate to London at 19 in pursuit of. My experience is one shared by many of my peers: a brain drain of people interested in the arts.

Wee Nuls is an artist and organiser in the art scene in Belfast. She recalls that she “couldn’t wait to get out of here” when she was a teenager. After going to Newcastle for university she returned back to Belfast where she became interested in the graffiti scene in Belfast. Nuls has now been commissioned to make countless bits of street art across the city, with her work often grappling with feminist themes. She says that people in NI are used to receiving messages on walls through visual art, due to the unique tradition of political mural painting in the region. Whilst she wouldn’t consider what she does to be directly comparable, she thinks that growing up with murals around her in North Belfast subconsciously influenced her interest in graffiti art. Again, we see artists drawing on artistic traditions but applying modern perspectives to them. A lot of Nul’s work today now centres around event management in the art scene, organising festivals like Hit The Coast, a street art festival in Lurgan that draws in graffiti artists and enthusiasts from all over the world. In becoming an organiser, Nuls has become an antidote to the problem that made her leave NI in the first place. She also hosts street art tours, of which she says half of attendees are always tourists.

Craft and art have become a way for visitors to the country to immerse themselves in NI’s culture, heritage and the multitude of perspectives that exist here. However, the rich artistic output from NI should not be understood as divorced from our recent history of conflict, but tied to it.

This can be seen in explicit ways through artists who deal with The Troubles as a subject in their work. Lucinda Graham is a multidisciplinary artist living in Belfast. Her design is a melting pot of craft, art and fashion with knitwear and crocheting being preferred techniques of hers. She draws on the loaded iconography of the balaclava in Northern Irish history, using it as a “vessel” to explore ideas of “gender expression, hidden identity, longing and shame.” In the past couple of years balaclavas have arisen as trendy accessories in London fashion circles, long before that though Lucinda was using them as a way to reconcile with her Northern Irish identity. Art is not just used as a way of reconciling with our past but also of explaining it to outsiders. Mural tours are some of the most popular tourist tours across the country. Murals act as historical documents, told through the medium of visual art. Little else could go as far to poignantly communicate the deeply held feeling on both sides of our complicated history.

I believe this connection between the art that comes out of Northern Ireland also has more implicit connections to our history. Something as colossal as 30 years of civil war takes a toll on the collective psyche. Creativity, self expression and art in all of its forms acts as a way of processing trauma. Our history acts as an impetus, consciously or subconsciously, for generations of people who feel compelled to create and document. Our artists are born of a people who had to think creatively to live lives of dignity during troubled times, to reach an imperfect agreement, and to find a way to move on.

The NI of today is unrecognisable from the NI my parents grew up in. The NI art scene of today is unrecognisable from the one that I grew up with. This is a place that continues to evolve and offer up its stories to those who come to visit.