New digital archive captures artistic legacy of the Irish border

From Big Tom to Brexit mockumentaries – a newly launched digital archive captures the artistic legacy of the Irish border.

A new digital archive capturing the artistic legacy of the Irish border was launched as part of Trinity’s Arts and Humanities Research Festival in Trinity College Dublin on Monday, September 23, 2024.  

Ireland’s Border Culture is a groundbreaking open access digital archive of the literature, visual art, memoir and film of Ireland’s ‘cultural borderscape’ from 1921 to the present day.   

One hundred and seventy examples of literary and visual culture from and about the Irish border are featured in the archive ranging from Big Tom’s "Back to Castleblayney" to Lisa O’Neill’s "No Train To Cavan", and Spike Milligan’s "Puckoon" to Rita Duffy’s "United Ireland Tea Towel". 

The project was launched on the opening day of Trinity’s Arts and Humanities Research Festival, a week-long program of free talks and screenings spotlighting the fascinating work being undertaken by the university’s arts and humanities researchers.

“Ireland’s border is not just a political or constitutional division, it is a region of distinct creativity. Ireland’s Border Culture project aims to document the richness and variety of references to the border and understand partition’s effect on a unique kind of cultural productivity. The selected examples illuminate Ireland’s ‘cultural borderscape’ and represent the border as an imaginative and creatively productive space,” explains Trinity-lead of the project Eve Patten,  Professor of English and Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute. 

The project is a collaboration between Trinity Long Room Hub and the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. It is funded under the Higher Education Authority’s  North-South Shared Island research program.

The website includes extracts from numerous writers, including poets Louis MacNeice, Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon and Eiléan ni Chuilleanáin, and novelists Pat McCabe, Jennifer Johnston, John McGahern and Michelle Gallon.

It also features music, including country and western favourites Big Tom and the Mainliners, Dundalk punk poet Jinx Lennon and the 1964 Clones Fleadh Cheoil. Visual arts is also well represented including Gretta Bowen’s 1940s faux naif painting The Customs Examination and work by Rita Duffy, Desmond Reid, Mairead McClean and others. 

Most of the curation was undertaken by the project’s postdoctoral researcher Dr Orla Fitzpatrick, a specialist in Irish visual culture, who also included fascinating photography pieces including Brian Newman’s evocative sequence on forgotten borderland Orange Lodges and Kate Nolan’s brooding shots of the Donegal town of Pettigo, which straddles the border. She also tracked down stills from Kabosh theatre company productions and the Brexit television ‘mockumentary’ Soft Border Patrol.

The editing team included Queen’s researcher Dr Aisling Reid, who sourced, among other items, memoir extracts from politician and writer Cahir Healy, who was interned on the Argenta prison ship in Belfast Lough from 1922 – 1924 for his anti-partitionist activities.

With plans to develop and expand this growing resource with the inclusion of more writing from new immigrant communities in the border areas, the research team is keen to see how different users will respond to the material and perhaps suggest future inclusions.

Dr Garrett Carr, Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast added: “In capturing some of the artistic legacy of the border’s 100-year existence, the project has spotlighted the significance of writers, painters, photographers and film-makers in articulating the full complexity of life around the border region. We hope that this resource will be used by teachers, students, cultural historians and policy-makers, and members of the public at home and abroad, who are interested in Ireland’s border experience.”

Visit the website here: BorderCulture.net.