Carole Kane

Artist Carole Kane is a beautiful under the radar force for peace.  Trained as a weaver, she has a hands-on, graceful approach when it comes to community peacemaking.  As a young artist she felt moved by an appeal on the radio after the Omagh bombing, that was an ask for ideas on what to do with the carpet of flowers left in honour of the victims.  In a spur of the moment move Carol made an offer that would change her life.  In this conversation she shares from the heart about the power and potential for art to help and heal and what she has learned from being in those spaces.  We talk about the lack of focus on this aspect of our post conflict journey and how, when done sensitively, art has the potential to unlock so much. Voices like Carole’s have quiet gold to offer and can leave us feeling more peaceful, as a result of simply hearing their their stories of thoughful peacemaking.

Transcript

0:00:39 - Artist Carol Keane (98 Seconds)

0:06:40 - Creative Process and Material Innovation (65 Seconds)

0:13:28 - Finding Peace Through Creative Silence (55 Seconds)

0:21:44 - Transformation Through Art Therapy (57 Seconds)

0:27:03 - Exploring Peace and Reconciliation (150 Seconds)

0:33:48 - Spontaneous Dance Project Success (62 Seconds)

0:37:22 - The Power of Artists in Community (77 Seconds)

0:40:24 - Grassroots Power of Art and Healing (97 Seconds)

0:45:24 - Art, Healing, and Reconciliation (67 Seconds)

0:00:12 - Speaker 1
You're listening to Peace by Peace. I'm Jude Hill-Mitchell.

0:00:15 - Speaker 2
I'm Sarah Louise Martin, and together we want to create a space for curious conversations about post-conflict challenges and possibilities.

0:00:23 - Speaker 1
We'll hear from those who press on with the hard graft of peace and find out what challenges they've recycled in their own backstories.

0:00:30 - Speaker 2
We want to get as real as we can about the things that hold us back and share insights into how we can all play our part in the peace of this place.

0:00:38 - Speaker 1
Heads up on the format. In each episode, one of us will be in conversation with the guests and then we'll both come back together at the end to get personal and chat our way through what's moved and sparked us.

0:00:57 - Speaker 3
They would have come in saying you know, I'm feeling frozen, I'm feeling scared or just can't understand what's happening, I'm feeling numb. But they would have left my workshops, leaving saying I'm starting to feel again and I was aware that they were leaving different than how they had actually come in.

0:01:16 - Speaker 1
Today's piece by piece guest is artist Carol Keane, who is this beautiful under the radar force for peace. Trained as a weaver, she has a hands-on, graceful approach when it comes to the art of community peacemaking. As a young artist, she felt moved by an appeal she heard on the radio after the OMA bomb, when a council spokesperson was wondering what to do with the carpet of flowers that had been left in honour of the victims. In this spur the moment move, carol made an offer that would change her life. In this conversation she also shares about the power and potential for art to help and heal.

Voices like Carol's have quiet gold to offer us and leave us feeling more peaceful as a result of simply hearing their stories. So let's get into it. Here is the insightful Carol Kane. Carol, welcome to Peace by Peace. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks, jude, it's lovely to be here, carol. We'll start with a question I ask everybody right at the start of each podcast episode, and that is just to tell us a place where you feel most at home, most at peace, and if you can maybe capture what that feels like.

0:02:30 - Speaker 3
Well, home for me is home. You know, I am very comfortable being in my house. I live in a cottage in Port Glanone and it's in the middle of the countryside, so I'm very, very privileged. It's just a lovely place and so it's very peaceful and quiet, so how could I not be at peace there? But I come from Portrush so I also feel still very much connected to the sea and to the coast. I'm very much at peace when I'm on the West Strand or the East Strand and on the beaches, usually when the wind's blowing.

0:03:03 - Speaker 1
It really cold. Yeah, yeah, are you a sea swimmer?

0:03:06 - Speaker 3
I'm not a sea swimmer no, I can't swim but which is terrible. Haven't grown up there, but it's the truth and I admire those who go in and I hear their screams and think not, that's not for me, not me no, brilliant, you're a creative, obviously.

0:03:22 - Speaker 1
Is home, then, important for you, as that space of peace where you create and get your inspiration in nature and, just yeah, in your home environment?

0:03:32 - Speaker 3
I like to make anything, you know, whether that is spending time in the garden or baking or making food or sewing or doing something with my hands, you know, um, I just like any kind of transformative project, anything that has a bit of a challenge and something that can bring a color to or a wee bit of quirkiness to. So, yeah, very, really, quite settled doing anything like that. Maybe a wee bit of an introvert sometimes, I have to kind of push myself outside again, but I'm just quite content in my own space yeah, and you've touched on your work already, so just tell us a wee bit about what you do, if you can sum it up.

0:04:09 - Speaker 1
I know it is quite varied, but, yeah, just sum up the heart of it.

0:04:12 - Speaker 3
Well, I trained as a weaver in Dundee, I went to university in Dundee and I did constructed textiles, so like in that sense, always building, always, you know, not kind of a two-dimensional maker but more of a three dimensional maker. And I came back home again to Northern Ireland and started to kind of tutor in adult education and involved in the process of making paper and had been working in a local art centre in Port Stewart and had been doing various workshops and little short courses and then making paper for my own work as well and playing as well, discovering and exploring with a lot of different flowers and foliage, and then really enjoyed communicating with groups and really enjoyed helping them discover things themselves, maybe their own style or their own kind of approach, maybe more than being a teacher as such.

0:05:17 - Speaker 1
And with adult education, with adult social learning, it was that sense that everybody was learning something different, so everything, everybody was sharing that learning within the group you've a brilliant quote on your website that really caught my attention, um Lincoln, weaving and peacemaking and you said the practice of weaving together repetitively, build and remove, and allowing fabrics to settle, and creating new space and substance everything within this practice has brought me into peace building. That is why I love chatting to people in this podcast, because peacemaking comes in so many different guises. Can you take us back to when you made that link between the art that you were creating and the peace of this place?

0:05:57 - Speaker 3
Yeah, well, you know, I think the process that you've just said there it's really it's not a linear process, you know, it's very much of a three steps forward, two back, um, and it's not a quick fix. It's something that comes quite intuitively and something that you know that mistakes are welcome, and I guess you know I'm not looking for the formula when I'm kind of doing something creative, I'm looking for something that feels right right now and that really for me, is kind of a process within peace building. It's often like that, and when things go wrong we tend to be frustrated and kind of think, oh, it's not working, but it actually is, but it's just finding its own groove, and the creative process is largely like that as well. So I guess you know I'm creating a new surface, I'm creating a new story, I'm creating something that has not been discovered before because of that kind of rearranging and shifting and moving, and I suppose I'm shifting and moving as well as the artist, as I'm doing that and I'm also working with the material I've got. Sometimes the material determines or predicts what I do with it, and in my piece building work it's, it can be like that too.

It. Can you know people possibly that I'd be working with. You know, things can happen with them. Or sometimes they rush ahead and kind of all speeds up, or sometimes they need time. Sometimes the spaces are as important as what's filled in between them. You know, I'm trained as a weaver so I look for patterns and I also find the gaps. So very often the gaps would be where project can develop or or something can emerge. So it's a very similar. You know it's a very similar process, but one that is it kind of needs its own time to evolve as well. It's almost a player or a dancer in the process.

0:07:46 - Speaker 1
And what was it in your own backstory that really awakened you to the world of peacemaking as well? Was it through your work or, I suppose, in your own story as well, like where did, where did your passion for peace come from?

0:08:00 - Speaker 3
Well, I think it was probably a combination of things. I know, in the first workshop or the first course I taught in Flowerfield, there was a man in the group it was a 10-week course and there was a man in the group who had his father had died naturally of natural causes and I was just really aware that over that 10-week period I saw that man getting stronger and it was partly, I think, because we met every week we met once a week Partly because of the people who were also in the group with him. Some nights he might have come in a bit quiet at the start but he would have left the sessions really engaging with people and feeling really quite, I suppose, satisfied with what he had made that night. So that was kind of one aspect. Another um was simply, as I said, I just did a couple of workshops and I saw within that context, people are clicking, they're working well together here.

Um, and then there was a situation kind of came up in the aftermath of the Oma bomb, or the bomb in Oma in 1998, and I was just aware of the number of people who were coming into the town and leaving flowers in the streets and the streets that were were broken and you know, blood stained, water stained, and yet this, this carpet of beauty was emerging and and carpet of fragility as well. So it seemed to be very kind of counter in that environment and really in response to just a throwaway comment on the radio you know, what might people do with the flowers? I thought, well, I know what you would do with those flowers, you would make paper with those flowers. And then I thought about, you know again, the power of bringing people together. And this particular man in my group who got stronger and I thought and I was driving in my car at the time and I thought, you know, maybe there's something in this so contacted the council and offered to do a workshop, for a picture to hang in a doctor's surgery was my suggestion, and they came back. And the council came back and asked me would I oversee the making of pictures for each of the brave families and then large pieces for Oma Bunkrana in Madrid, and those were the three places that lost people because of the atrocity. So I said, yes, I'll do it.

I was a very young artist, very naive, but I threw myself into this task. How could I say no? I had the support. The council were amazing. It was Frank Sweeney and Jean Brennan from the council at the time and they were incredible. And John McKinney was also a great support. Because of the council contacts they were able to coordinate with the schools and and also volunteer voluntary groups in the town. So we worked with about 150 people in the initial phase and then I went back 15 years later and then I went back on the 20th anniversary as well, so it was a long project that lasted 20 years and taking us back to that aftermath.

0:11:03 - Speaker 1
then there was 150 people. What were you actually working alongside them with? What was happening?

0:11:10 - Speaker 3
Well, I got them to make papers, basically. So we got a youth group and they worked with the council workers. The council workers were incredible, these men, and they had to kind of say in the town that they were going to lift the flowers, and when that was going to happen they weren't, they were using them in a, in a project, that they weren't just kind of cleaning away the flowers, um, and the young people kind of took the, the petals off the flowers, the heads off the flowers, and sort of prepared them, did a bit of a messy job, to be fair, but um, but very grateful for that. And then, uh, worked with primary school children and secondary schools and then we made the paper. Um, so that was really mixing the paper that were the flowers into paper pulp and dyeing the paper pulp and then painting literally with that paper pulp and playing in buckets of water, you know, and just really getting into that sort of a rhythmic process once you get into making paper, and it involves movement, it involves learning how to make the paper, then you make more of it and you make more of it, and so it becomes quite repetitive. I was kind of hearing, again, patterns.

People told me so much when they they came to the workshops but then once they got into the work, they, they got into the work and and it was as if what else was going on in their minds they just kind of left to the side, um, and got on with doing the artwork. But they would have come in saying, you know, I'm feeling frozen, I'm feeling scared or I just can't understand what's happening and I'm feeling numb. But they would have left my workshops, coming in or leaving, saying I'm starting to feel again. I've had a, I've had a break from thinking and I was aware that they were going. They were leaving exhausted, certainly, but they were leaving different than how they had actually come in. They were ready to face what they were going back to in a very different way than what they would have come in.

They left feeling, you know, it was visible to me that they were calmer and that, well, even just saying that they were starting to feel again and starting to reconnect, that was massive. So I kind of look out for those sorts of signs, even yet when I'm doing workshops and still, you know, I'll work with grips at times and they come in and they're all chat, chat and lots of noise and as soon as I get them to do something creative, the room will go quiet. And that, to me, is what peace is. It's not, you know, it's the kind of the pulse calms down and um, and the collective pulse becomes slower and then people glide out of the room.

0:13:56 - Speaker 1
You know, it's quite an incredible thing and for you then watching that and listening and feeling all of that pain in the aftermath of oma, like how did that?

0:14:07 - Speaker 3
change you. It changed me massively, you know, but at the time it it was, it was quite you know, it was a, it became. It was an abnormal situation, certainly, but in that abnormality it became normal, if that makes sense. Um, and it has struck me, listening to the inquiry recently, how you know how emotional, how deep people's experiences had been, um, and, and yet I kind of just took it you know, this is how it is whenever I was going through it. So, um, so, I guess for me, I, I had good people around me, you know, to, um, to support me. I also walked on the beach a lot, you know and, um, yeah, and there was a sense because I was seeing, you know, the work can feed itself sometimes, because I was seeing the difference that it was making in people. It made it worthwhile as well.

But when it came to showing the work, people kept coming back to see the artwork and that was the first time the Books of Condolence were also on display too. So they kept coming back. So the exhibition stayed up for seven weeks and kept coming back to the library, which was where we showed the artwork. So people would have sat with the work and, you know, left, left, as I say, and come back again. So the space became really a bit of a sanctuary, um, and was really what was needed at the time. You know it just um, it just was needed for, you know, for the average person, you know, just to have a place to drop into.

0:16:02 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's intriguing, then, that you carried all of those stories with you and you ended up then going back on the 15th anniversary. Um, what was that like, going back to listen again? And I suppose, what did you learn from that in terms of grieving the conflict?

0:16:18 - Speaker 3
well, I went back really to see what could I learn from or what could we collectively even learn from this kind of co-created experience. And I went back with Malachi O'Doherty and we gathered some audio and written stories from people. It was interesting because after the bomb happened and I would have told people outside of OMA where I had the work I'd done, it reached the stage where I kind of almost waited on their response and this is people not from the town because they would have stopped me and told me where they were when they heard about the bomb. That was something I got used to over that kind of 15 year period. But when I went back to OMA at the 15th anniversary, there was a change in language, because then people told me where they were when they felt the bomb. That was that's significant for me, because it's obviously, you know, the senses are so powerful and our bodies, you know, we absorb so much in our bodies and we take for granted, but our senses really, you know, it's what we see and hear and of course that's how sound gets into our bodies, you know. So for people to have felt on one level what the atrocity meant for them, but then on another level to have felt. It was just really very telling for me. So the 15th anniversary was a smaller group of people and they very graciously came together for us to be able to chat with them and we were I was kind of keen to explore what did the process mean to them and and also very much aware that this was the.

To my knowledge, this was the only piece of art that was related to the troubles and community art that was related to the troubles that the people themselves had actually made. Their fingerprints were not they, they were putting themselves into the work, so things that that kind of emerged around that 15th anniversary and and seemed significant and that was just as well. Um, as I was considering doing a master's, so I started my own master's and I used the OMA atrocity or my experience in Pedals of Hope as one of my case studies in my master's. So I was kind of looking back on on that process which, unknowingly I was, I was using some of the expressive arts and methodologies, but they were coming to me very instinctively and also in the context of peace building. It's also significant because I wasn't using it as a therapist, I was using it as a peace builder instead. So it's again. It's this thing about building small bits and bringing them together.

0:18:55 - Speaker 1
And how did your experience of UMA then shape your work going forward? Did you then find that there were other places or groups who were really keen to experience that community art idea and use it, I suppose, to to meet whatever their, their needs or trauma were as well?

0:19:13 - Speaker 3
Yes, well, it kind of my work sort of straddles both peace building and also community art practice, and I've worked for a long time on community arts partnership. But it's the same essence. When you bring people together to make something collectively, um, or to to make beauty, to bring beauty into um, into situation, and it's all about empowerment, normally people come into groups and they say, oh, I'm not, I'm not an artist, I can't do this, I can't somebody said that to me this morning. Oh, but don't ask me to draw, you know. So already the shutters are down.

So it's that thing about. You know, we talk in expressive arts about low skill, high sensitivity. So it's about bringing them into an entry point that is not too technical or too difficult and allowing them to be able to achieve that, and then taking them from there, and that's largely. You know. There's a parallel to that for me as well within peacebuilding. The task of peacebuilding just seems overwhelming, seems huge. And where do you start? And you start in the small places, and you start in the small ways and you build those up.

0:20:24 - Speaker 1
What can be gleaned from your work when you look at the story of so many victims, when it comes to looking back at our past and our stories and obviously that has been a real stumbling block for government here but what can we glean from your experiences then in terms of victims really feeling heard?

0:20:39 - Speaker 3
Victims. Work is hard work. You know I'm saying that as a practitioner. It's, it's difficult work and for me, I think it comes back to that that place of of the kind of the art workshop, as being we kind of class or call it as a creative laboratory. You know, you come into a space that is a creative space, so it's a constructive space, it's not destructive and and it is about building and it is about doing something that you didn't think you were going to be able to do john paul ederak talks about, you know, bring something into being that doesn't yet exist.

I think for me, the the most effective work that I've done with those who have been deeply hurt is about not insensitively, but it is about kind of leaving the situation to the side so that we can make something, and that something then having its own space within the context of how we're being together. And then people they leave different than how they came in. Very often people will say to me at the door if this is therapy, I'm out of here, I don't want to come in, you know. So I'll say right, at the very best we're going to make some art and have some fun. At the very worst, we're going to have some fun, you know, and they normally then come in. They know they're make some art and have some fun at the very worst. We're going to have some fun, you know, and?

And they normally then come in when they know they're not under the spotlight, um, but those will be the people who leave the session saying I feel as if I've been in therapy, which is really quite a bizarre thing. So they leave different than how they felt when they started, and that's not to say there isn't a place for therapy, if that's what people need, but I also think that kind of what I do with people can work alongside it. We're not searching for justice, we're not searching for blame, you know. It's very much about just calming things down in order to be able to cope, and that can be a big deal. Yeah.

0:22:42 - Speaker 1
And you mentioned there that it is difficult work, um, complex work. What are some of the challenges that you've faced within that and trying to keep going in that space? And also, is your work always understood? Are there times, I suppose, when people don't get?

0:22:58 - Speaker 3
what you're trying to do yeah there's loads of times people don't get what I'm trying to do and um, and of course you know I go through funding application processes and I have to justify what I'm going to do before I do it. And and again, john Paul talks about, you know, the element of surprise that comes in the work and how do you know what the surprise is going to be when you're writing an application? So there's, there's all of those kind of, and to me the place where the surprise is is where change takes place. So it's unpredictable, it's, it's not easy to measure and I think when I was earlier at this work I worried more about that. I worry about it less now and more prepared to take risks, risks.

But if people will give the artwork experience a chance, then they catch it, then there's some level of resonance with them and it clicks. You know so, and I see that happening in my master's one of my lecturers talked about. Look for the twinkle in their eye and you see it happening. You see people's body language changing or you see just a resonance that something makes starts to kind of connect with them. And it's largely because of the use of the senses and the body within the art practice. I often think about rosanne. Cash uses an example. She sings to the five percent in any audience because the others that come to her concert are there because of her father or because they want something somewhere to go on a Saturday night. But the five percent of her true fans are the ones who get it um so. So to me very often in the workshops it takes that five percent to start, but then the rest eventually do warm up to it.

0:24:41 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and I love that description of the twinkles in people's eyes and those moments of change. Without revealing individual stories, is there a way for you to take us into a moment where you really witnessed that happening and you could see that that was a moment of peace for somebody being made?

0:24:59 - Speaker 3
Well, yeah, it happened last week in a workshop where I was doing something creative with a grip, and I would say it even happened this morning. Again, people were saying I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do this, and there's kind of the doubter in the grip there's usually one, at least one and I said I don't think I can do this, I can't do this. But the twinkle in his eye came when he started to do what I had was showing him to make and the fact he was able to achieve it. Um, he was like, oh yeah, this is really good, you know. And then he started into making more and more and once he got into it, then there was there was really no stopping him before the end of the session and he was saying at the end of it that was great. I really, you know, got a lot out of that. So, um, that might be one context.

Another context happened in more sort of piece work I was doing, not that long ago and I was facilitating that.

It was in more of a dialogue session and, um, a man heard somebody else's story, resonated not only with his own story, but more the story of his own mother who had come from another side or the other side of the community, all of a sudden, by seeing or by hearing someone else's experience resonated with this man, and he was. He was moved within the context of our group. He said himself I had not considered that that had been my mother's experience when my mum had passed away, obviously sometime before that, and you know, it's just that realisation Now. It didn't mean that he all of a sudden forgot his own views or his own experiences, but he was widened because he had heard the experience of somebody else. Looking again for those opportunities of of when are people moved, when are they touched and I don't mean they have to be crying in sessions, that's not what I mean and it can come in different ways but just looking for that, that kind of shared experience and resonance.

0:27:03 - Speaker 1
You know, you are obviously in so many different community settings and sensing the temperature of this place and and its different parts. I'm just wondering where you think we are up to when it comes to peace and reconciliation. How do you see us?

0:27:19 - Speaker 3
Well, I think you know we like our definitions here and we like to be able to define what is reconciliation, what is peace, what is? And you know, and I think you know we like our definitions here and we like to be able to define what is reconciliation, what is peace. And you know, and I think we need to. Just, I've heard many people saying they're grappling with how to do reconciliation not quite sure what it is, but you know, allowing us to not become fixed in one stance or in one position, I think is really important. In one stance or in one position, I think is really important. And reconciliation we just have to keep believing that it will happen and keep making spaces where that you know that can happen. I've been doing that sort of work, particularly in through a couple of methodologies in the last couple of years and not being scared maybe of those difficult conversations or those difficult ways of being able to communicate, because sometimes words get in the way and that's where the arts can be really helpful.

I've seen reconciliation happening completely out of expectation. I've seen it happening in my own family life where, you know, I felt for long, long periods of time people will not reconcile, they are not, that's just not going to happen. And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, on some sunny day, you know, just all of a sudden, something connects. So I think we have to keep believing and keep working towards reconciliation and conciliation, not even assuming that we have to come back together again, but even bringing people together who have not been together in the first place. There's much to be done, and I also think that Finding different ways to be able to articulate where we're coming from and listening not just saying it or doing it, but hearing it and keeping face-to-face contact is critical in this very media-related world, a process that would you know, build on that storytelling aspect that governments have promised to do here and put in place for people.

0:29:22 - Speaker 1
what would you, what angle would you bring in from the work you're doing in terms of how that would look or what would really help victims and survivors in that space or wider society actually as well?

0:29:33 - Speaker 3
I think there's a sense of restorying. Now, I don't mean repeating, you know I like to transform stories. You know, how can we turn this from a nasty ending? How can we turn this into something that is going to profit us and benefit us or benefit the next generation, because very often with our stories it's the next generation who will work it, play it out, and it's not always in a positive way, you know.

And just going back again, I think we rush into maybe telling our stories too quickly, because essentially, dealing with the hurt and telling the story are two different things. So how can we deal with the hurt and deal with the body and deal with what we may be, you know, negative experiences? How can we get ourselves in the position and in the place and in the attitude that is calmer in order to be able to eventually deal with or tell the stories? And I think it's quite a Northern Ireland thing for us to kind of go straight in on the stories and that can often be nerve on nerve in opposed to considering how can we just calm things down and bring in healing or bring in the potential for healing, the creative processes of making, creating something else, co-creation, making beauty is just part of all of that.

0:30:59 - Speaker 1
And can I ask you personally as well, because you're from here, you know this is your context have there been areas of your own backstory you've had to look at, or triggers you've had, maybe in groups that actually you've had to find your own piece as well in terms of encountering narratives across the board, and how have you done that really?

0:31:20 - Speaker 3
yeah, really interesting because, again, something I learned at my master's was around self-care. Really, before I I went, before I did the course, you know, we I wouldn't have practiced self-care, you know. And in fact when that module came, I remember saying to my lecturer no, no, we don't do that in Northern Ireland. We're tough, you know. And her response she carefully told me, although I'd say it more quickly she said, if we are not responsible for ourselves, particularly as practitioners and journalists and media and people who work in this field in any level, that we will re-traumatise into our communities again. And we need to know what are our own triggers. When are we tired? When do we need rest? When do we eat? Well, all of those kind of things are part and parcel to us being able to sustain ourselves within the work.

If things get tiring or intense, I now know to kind of pull back, take a break just to ease off. I know if I've, you know, been working with groups co-facilitation is important as well and those you know. So things like that is about, you know, trying as much as possible to do no harm in the practice, but also means doing no harm to myself too, and knowing what my, you know, trying to be as objective as possible and that's not my political agenda or it's not something I'm trying to kind of implant on a group. You know it can't be like that, but I have to. I think when I try to work as objectively as possible, um, it's easier going forward?

0:32:56 - Speaker 1
um, when you look at Northern Ireland and just, I suppose, the moments we're in, are there any projects you're working on at the moment that are giving you particular hope or particular challenge? Or just, I suppose, give again? A bit of an insight into current dynamics here.

0:33:12 - Speaker 3
I've just been finished working on a crime prevention project which has been really interesting, again using the arts and working with young people, and that has been great. I've worked with a drama facilitator in that and it's been a really helpful way to help young people find scenarios that maybe scare them or give them concern. They don't know what to do. Doing a little bit of kind of breath work with them, calming them down or showing them how to calm themselves down, rather, and then they find the scenario out of the exit points, out of those difficult scenarios. This time last year I just finished working on a project which was based on Breathe some of John Paul Lederach's words and I worked with a dance facilitator in that and it was in the crumlin road so we ended up taking the group into the street and and dancing through the peace walls. You know I hadn't really intended to do that at the start of the program, but it's that.

It's that sort of spontaneous yeah let's kind of just go with this it went really well. It went really well and, um, we've lovely photographs to be able to kind of tell the story of that. But, um, very small group of very brave women who, uh, who worked with the material over a period of time and, um, yeah, and literally took it onto their streets and some of them were walking through the gate saying I never thought I would be here doing this you know.

0:34:44 - Speaker 1
Wow what a moment, yeah, and they did it you know Must have been so moving as well, just to see and be part of.

0:34:51 - Speaker 3
Moving and fun and we all survived it. Of course we survived it. So it's that thing about risk.

0:35:04 - Speaker 1
Sometimes survived it, so it's that thing about risk sometimes you don't know until you do the thing how it's going to go. But, um, but you know, if you don't do it, it you've missed it. You'll never know exactly. Yeah, and final question for you, because you've taken us on a gorgeous tour of your work and just all those stories along the way what is your vision of home? Circling back to that, that first question, um, what's your vision of the wider home that we all share here? What would you like ultimately to see for peace and this place?

0:35:27 - Speaker 3
well, I think this place is changing just as much as the rest of the world is changing, and I think that you know, we sometimes forget that because we, you know, we think that of course we're the center of the universe and we're actually not, um. So so I, I just think, you know, I just think we need to be just take a deep breath and consider ourselves primarily and consider other people. You know, self-care as we care, and looking after, looking out for ourselves, being wise, having some kind of sense of moral compass as well, as I think important because we don't live in this world in isolation, even though our phones in our pockets might tell us that and the fundamentals of looking after a planet, of connecting with nature, of of being aware of the seasons changing, of, of every day having a new start. The sun comes up every morning. Those are gifts that we have in this world or in our country that aren't happening elsewhere, and and they're very precious.

Even for me, to have a home is a very precious thing, so I don't take any of that for granted. And our world, you know, how can we leave this world? How can we live in this world so that future generations will be kinder to each other. And John Paul again, he speaks about the enemies or the great-grandchildren of our enemies. How can we look after them? So, yeah, there are lots of challenges and so, yeah, there are lots of challenges, but we have to stay connected to ourselves and each other in those challenges.

0:37:06 - Speaker 1
It's been a total joy to chat to you. And actually. I feel calmer as a result of this conversation. So thanks so much for your time.

0:37:13 - Speaker 3
Thanks, jude, it's been a privilege. Thank you, it's been a privilege Thank you.

0:37:22 - Speaker 1
So, Sarah Louise, we've just been listening to Carol Keane there and I just thought she brought such a unique angle to peacemaking. What did you make of what she had to say?

0:37:41 - Speaker 4
It was so interesting on so many different levels. I love the imagery around. She was a weaver and weaving is pulling things together, shape-shifting, not a linear process. You're not looking for formula, you're actually looking for space. That really piqued my interest. I was like, wow, that's such a beautiful metaphor actually for a lot of work that a lot of people do in their community all the time, actually for a lot of work that a lot of people do in their community all the time.

You know, the space is important.

It's the space between that allows the work or the movement to happen, and I think we don't pay our artists or our creatives enough attention, because they are the ones that capture the mood of the moment, capture and translate the zeitgeist, ones that capture the mood of the moment, capture and translate the zeitgeist, and they've always done that for as far back as time has existed, and they show us how to feel, they show us how to, how to be in a moment that's difficult.

Give us, give us something to focus on when we don't know how to translate that or we don't know how the words for ourselves. Like I actually had a full-on sob when she was talking about being involved in the OMA bombing and the response afterwards, and as a young artist, she had this compelling need to want to do something. I had a full-on like I wept as I was listening to her describe it and I was just like, wow, you know, translating pain to paper sounds crazy, but actually the it's the process, it's, it's, it's the journey, not the final product, and that's the same for all of us, right?

0:39:14 - Speaker 1
that's so powerful, because I think, yes, what resonated with me is that paper it's such a mundane thing and yet, from that then was this, as you say, just this incredibly powerful process where she was describing people saying we, we've, we've just felt for the first time since that happens, and that is, you know, that is priceless, um, and I think what I took as well, um is that art can be seen as this. You know, nice to have extra um, but for us now, at this stage, just listening to Carol um, and when we think about there's so many incredible art projects across the piece that are involved in reconciliation work, arts, the value of arts, at this stage, you know it should be, it should be central, it should be one of the main avenues we use to deepen our sense of reconciliation. And I think the conversation with her just really fuelled that within me, really fueled that within me. And when I met Carol, I thought she was such an understated yet incredibly powerful person in terms of the work she's doing.

And I think that is the reality with some of the, the art that is going on. It is that grassroots, it's under the radar, it's understated and yet, as you say, when you hear that process and those moments she described. I love how she described you know the twinkle in someone's eye, or somebody going out of the room gliding, or you know just the glimmers that happen, that you know we can talk about peace in the abstract, and then she, she just brought it right into that personal space, those moments, um, of healing, or moments of reality, or moments of confrontation, where people confront their own emotions and it it just, it lands, it doesn't it? It takes it, as you say, away from this abstract thing, um, and there's such a power there.

0:41:18 - Speaker 4
And the ability just two phrases that came to mind. You know absolute beauty from complete destruction and hope from despair. The work that she's been doing has really gently been doing those things. It hasn't been in any way wanting to build a platform. It's been the complete opposite. It's been how can I serve um people in a way that I'm using my skills and abilities and I know how to meet them where they're at, in a non-threatening way, in a way that you know she even talked about how Northern Irish people are just like, if this is therapy, I'm not interested.

You know, there's such a guardedness to an apprehension of things that we don't feel comfortable about. You know, in some ways we're such an open people, we're so warm and and yet we're very practical and pragmatic and we just like to get on with things and don't cause any fuss. You know, kind of very much crack on and that mentality, I think, serves us for a certain amount of time. In fact, it has allowed people to keep going with life in the midst of really hard things. But there comes a time when cracking on actually isn't the response that's required and we need to go below the surface, because cracking on keeps us up here, you know it keeps us at the head level and it's it's the likes of engaging in these kind of experiences that you know. When you, when you have a lot of things and trauma in your head and your, your, maybe your work is very much, you're using your mind a lot for your work. It's really awesome to use your hands for things as a way to relax, like there's something that happens in your brain. I mean, I don't know what the term is, but there's something that happens in your brain when you go from using your mind and your head for your work stuff and then using your hands to relax, because it switches something off and it allows you to go to a deeper level in something, and I thought I loved her.

She used a couple of really lovely turns of phrases. Like you know, we're widened by the experience of others, shared experience and the resonance that we have, and isn't that what we're looking for in life? If we're really honest, we want to be um, we want to experience other people's worlds and other people's lives as a way, sometimes to as a mirror to ourselves, but also as something different. That's what keeps us growing and having a growth mindset is is maybe not something that northern irish people have been typically famous for, because we just want to stick in, to stick to what we know, because that feels safe. But what if we were to even consider that idea?

What does it mean to be widened by the experience of others? What does that look like in the context of my day? Can I be curious about someone with a completely different perspective to me? I'm trying to be better at that and I think it's how it helps you to be less reactive and more, um, inquisitive. And you know, we love, we love, love. People love understanding how people tick. It's just another tool to to allow you to understand how people show up and operate in the world.

0:45:03 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and it's definitely one of the major hopes with what we're doing in this podcast. And I think you're right to personalize it, to say what are the immediate defaults, reactions, assumptions that we all bring when we listen to the news, when we meet people, and it's like how did each of us then override that? And it it the whole conversation as well. I just I think in my head I moved it from the grassroots to look at the, the bigger politics piece, because there is so much focus, rightly, on truth and justice and the importance of people knowing exactly what happens, and that is such an important part of the post-conflict kind of space. It made me realise that we don't talk about the other piece of it.

As you say, the art provides this thing. It's not around facts for people, it's the healing side of it, and it just made me think again of the fact that there's been no official reconciliation process, essentially, and different government agreements. There's been footnotes about storytelling, archives and oral history, and it's always been a footnote. It hasn't been fleshed out and yet at this stage, this just seems like a vital, a vital thing that should be focused on, and you know how much healing could come where people don't have to bring um, be factual about things, and it's a. It's a different response, um and I.

0:46:34 - Speaker 4
I think the arts again opens that up- yeah, and I I can speak into that from a personal point of view. You know and I think the arts again opens that up yeah, and I can speak into that from a personal point of view. You know, my dad was murdered. That's been a very painful process, obviously for our family. We haven't had any justice at all and that is really hard. And it's really hard to have to watch people rewrite the narrative of history when it's not true. It's really hard to watch that. And yet, at the same time, there is an opportunity to to say, yes, this really terrible thing happened, but this is not going to destroy my life. This is not going to be the only thing that I'm known for or or that people recognize about me, and that's also not an easy thing. That's, uh, that's the thing that takes a lot of work and so many families in Northern Ireland have had to do that. They've had to just anyway.

You know, going back to my other phrase, crack on um and if there was opportunity, I think people, I can only speak for myself, but um, people, I can only speak for myself, but victims and survivors groups have felt very much that they've been completely forgotten. They've been actually written out of progressing forward for Northern Ireland, but at the same time I don't know what that would look like. I think the closest thing and we've chatted about this briefly the closest thing could be something like the truth and reconciliation commission that they had in South Africa. The reason that we're so stuck is because we haven't truthfully named the past and really people taking accountability for it, and because it's been so painful. I would imagine people just don't want to go there because they're just like that was so long ago. We've worked so hard to get to where we are. If we dig into that and then maybe that's going to bring us back to square one.

But I do really think that it's a powerful thing that we can, that we could enter into in a way that would be really hopeful and there is room for it, because we see that the tensions are a millimeter thick from erupting at any point. Like you know, a couple of years ago, when they were talking about the Irish sea border, like people were on the streets and ready to go. That's not dissimilar. It's the collective identity piece, but it's also the feeling forgotten for what has gone before and there's no easy answer. There is no easy answer and having lived it myself, you know my process of thinking through that has shifted and changed over time. What I wouldn't give to have like an hour with my dad, you know, yeah, it's been.

0:49:53 - Speaker 1
It's been brutal and I think then, going back to then, that really gentle approach that's personal to people, it's not some sort of template for families. I think that, because those individual stories, that that you are living in a way that that is completely unique to your family, and those tears that you're still crying, um, and the value of those, then how do we? Yeah, how do we just help people feel seen? Yeah, it's, it's that, it is that deep work. And I think, listening to artists, then you know people like Carol, what a voice, what, what insight she brings. Incredible woman, and I said at the end I felt calmer for listening to her and you know. So these lead artists like this and I think of many other projects you know, caboche Theatre, theatre of Witness in Derry, healing Through. Remember, there are incredible projects out there and these are the people that could provide insight and leadership, I think, into how to really support more and more families in this healing journey and for people to be seen.

0:51:11 - Speaker 4
Yeah, and heard. I think we haven't valued the arts as much as we should, and there needs to be more opportunity, for this is a way for communities to come together, um, to celebrate what is unique about us in this part of the world, and there is a lot like. We are a very creative nation, north and south. Um, we're known for that, that's, you know, going out into the world. That's what Irish people the world over have're known for. That that's, you know, going out into the world. That's what Irish people the world over have been known for. How do we celebrate that more effectively? Because it's a really beautiful thing and it's not a wishy-washy thing. It's really deep. It's deep in us, deep in us and as a way to create, as a way to speak to and speak from our history. We can create from, from the painful things, and sometimes it's the only way that, where words don't seem to be enough or or be the right words or or capture things in a way, I think art and creativity can do that really beautifully.

0:52:26 - Speaker 1
You've been listening to Peace by Peace. Thanks so much for joining us. Our big hope here is that these would spark conversations in the homes and worlds we live and move in as, piece by piece, we figure peace out together. We'd love to bring piece by piece out into the wild and host conversations in your community. If you're interested in sponsoring this venture and adventure, then please do get in touch. Thank you.

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