CRC is 30-years-old in 2020.

During this year, we'll be highlighting the significant work undertaken by the groups and organisations that have been supported to build peace in local communities.

If you have a story to tell or an example to highlight, please get in touch with us at info@nicrc.org.uk

Nominations are now open for the Community Relations Council’s Good Relations Award 2020.

We host an annual award in recognition of exceptional achievement in peace-building work.

If you know someone deserving special recognition, nominate them now by clicking on the link below to download the nomination form.…

T:BUC Engagement Forum

11 February 2020
Armagh City Hotel
9.30am -1.30pm
 

This Engagement Forum focuses on the "Uniting Communities through Sport and Creativity" headline action. Hear more about the work delivered under this headline action and also from representatives of PeacePlayers NI, Irish Football Association and the Gaelic Athletic Association.

When Peter Makem decided to run a music festival in South Armagh, he just knew it had to feature his uncle – internationally renowned folk musician Tommy Makem. The difficulty being, back then, he knew “little about funding.”

So he approached the Community Relations Council for support and received CR/CD funding.

That initial event, staged in 1999, would be to promote and celebrate song tradition, and included a major concert by Tommy and friends.

Since then, it grew into the Tommy Makem Festival of Song, a major annual event staged in Keady...

An open and genuine conversation about the place of Paramilitarism in working-class communities and in the life experience of young people – this was the goal of an original theatre production by Partisan Productions.

Time of Your Life received funding through the Community Relations Council’s CR/CD Small Grants Scheme.

Developed through conversations with individuals and groups across east Belfast and beyond, and in partnership with The Ballymac Friendship Trust, the production explored the social, cultural and environmental landscape in which Paramilitarism is embedded. 

Playing originally to three centres in July 2019, it led to a prestigious Department of Justice launch event.

TEO’s Good Relations Outcomes Branch met with the Ardoyne Community Partnership to discuss ways of recording the good relations outcomes of the projects the Partnership is delivering on the ground in North Belfast.
 
The Ardoyne Community Partnership is one of a number of organisations delivering the North Belfast Strategic Good Relations Programme (NBSGRP), a good relations programme funded by TEO and managed by the Community Relations Council.
 
The objective of the NBSGRP is to improve community relations in the North Belfast area and contribute to the Together: Building a United Community (T:BUC) Strategy.
 
The meeting is one of a number Good Relations Outcomes Branch are holding to collect good relations outcome data from all contract holders and use the information to improve delivery in the NBSGRP and more widely across the sector...

Every quarter our core-funded groups meet up to share experiences and learn from each other. This is an important element of our Shared Learning Forum – the exchange of ideas and skills.

At our last Shared Learning Forum, the group dynamic was captured by NVTV. Take a look at the video below to see the Shared Learning Forum in action and to hear from those who attended.

The video was featured on NVTV...

Four inspirational women from Urban Village areas were chosen to speak at a major TEDxStormontWomen 2019 event.

The local women were selected from Urban Village areas in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry to speak at the TEDxStormontWomen event in Parliament Buildings on 12 December.

Annette Burke, Maire Thompson and Arlene Megaw from Belfast, and Shauna Quigley from Derry/Londonderry appeared at the prestigious event following The Executive Office’s Urban Villages Initiative Open Mic events.

The initiative was part of the TEDxStormontWomen Masterclass programme, which was led by Bespoke Communications Sarah Travers and Camilla Long, to deliver a cross-community, intergenerational, capacity-building initiative with the core aim of making girls and women more confident in public speaking...

The “Shared Housing” headline action from the “Together: Building A United Community” (T:BUC) strategy has provided the foundation of a draft Programme for Government.

It’s entitled: “Housing for All” Shared Neighbourhood Programme.

The T:BUC strategy includes is a range of commitments designed to lead to sustainable improvements in good relations. 

One such commitment – delivered by the Department for Communities – was the creation of 10 new shared housing developments, including the Port Building Belfast completed September 2019...

The Community Relations Council, Heritage Fund and Decade of Commemorations Roundtable organised a special conference entitled:
Partition: A Dividing Ireland in a Dividing Europe.

The exciting and innovative regional one-day event engaged community-based participants in a day of learning to illuminate the period 1920-22.

The conference focused on events during a momentous and turbulent period of change, set within a global context.

An audio recording of the conference is available that includes the keynote speakers as well as a panel discussion centred on how partition is of particular interest to contemporary society.

The Nerve Centre has launched an animated film charting the events leading up to and around the Partition of Ireland, including the War of Independence and the Irish Civil War.

"Partition – a Creative Centenaries Film" was showcased during our special one-day regional conference "Partition: a Dividing Ireland in a Dividing Europe."

Using a unique method of 2.5D projection, archive imagery has been brought to life to tell a story of the seismic events at the turn of the century.

While running a successful building business at the time, Derek speaks about accepting a unique funded position to look into an alternative leadership approach using the vast numbers of marching bands members.
 
“Early on, it became clear that my background and “building site” approach to working was quite different from others within the sector.

“But I wanted to actively push for change to the status quo.

“One of the reasons I had been reluctant to take the job in the first place was the simple rationale that if you do a good job then you don’t have any job to do.

“This was my first real experience of cross-community engagement in the community sector…”