QUOTE Support for new Oral History Project in Ballinascreen

Anna Bryson and Ronan Deazley from QUOTE have been liaising with the Ballinascreen Commemoration Committee regarding a new community-based oral history project.

The committee was interested in exploring the possibility of increasing local access to the Fr Louis O’Kane oral history collection – a vital resource for understanding the local history of the Irish Revolution and Civil War period.

They approached QUOTE for support and Anna Bryson subsequently set up a meeting at QUB with representatives of the Committee and Mr Roddy Hegarty, Director of the Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich Memorial Library. Issues of copyright, ownership and local sensitivities were discussed and a way forward was found.

The Ó Fiaich Memorial Library has kindly agreed to provide the Committee with copies of the interviews Fr O’Kane conducted in the late 1960s with individuals from the Ballinascreen area. The Committee now plans to hold a series of local focus groups at which the recordings will be played. By inviting both young and old to attend they hope firstly to rinse out vitally important contextual details relevant to the accounts and secondly to further enhance the collection by adding a new layer of intergenerational memory.

Anna Bryson from QUOTE travelled to Ballinascreen on Sunday 19 February to speak at the official launch.