A Halloween Horror Story – The Old Schoolhouse…

You could just about see the roof of the old building, jutting out from behind a crooked tree, and I never believed my granny when she said that it’d once been the parish school – it was tiny. Barely a bungalow, with a few windows and an outhouse. Ginger told me that the last year of admissions was 1974, but that all the local children had gone there… including one in particular. The Big Man would call into my grandmother’s …

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Where “shared memory” and “story” meet lies something valuable

I was lucky enough to be asked by Youth Action Northern Ireland to present a workshop at their two-day Islands of Innovation conference/symposium attended by young leaders (18-35) yesterday in Belfast. The key purpose was to “explore what Britain and Ireland could look like in 2021, consider how they can contribute and assess what decisions need to be taken now and in the future”. A welcome shift from the resolutely backward focus of our stranded politics right now. It’s hard not to …

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