I spent a day in Derry last week. I've been a few times before but with children, in bad weather, and with no real motivation to do anything in particular. We walked the city walls, got soaking wet…went to the pub and watched the racing, as I remember.
Last week I was flying solo, on a professional assignment and the sun it was a'shining.
I avoided the walls for a while, explored the city's inner workings then hovered at its west side exit, Butcher's Gate. The road beyond leads, in a south-westerly direct, down to the Bogside.
I can't deny that I was a bit nervous about heading down that way.
The Bogside is a sprawling, largely Catholic/Republican enclave, sitting outside the city walls and, you might say, in its shadow – remember I said 'down to the Bogside'. As the name suggests, a long time ago this was not a place you would want to live. And that's why, when us English muscled our way across the island of Ireland around the 1600s, those that we didn't like were pushed down this way, into the quagmire. Even today it's not particularly pretty.
It has a complex history but once you know some of it, you can imagine why resentment was sparked, grew, manifested itself in violence and, in some areas, remains.
So, I was a bit nervous about heading down that way.
We like to think we live in enlightened times and certainly, since I began working in interpretation design, I have found myself more and more considering all sides of a story. It could be said that that is one of the missions of interpretation design – to provoke and to reveal – to give an impartial view of (always) multi-facetted stories; to tell us the things we didn't know and to change our view to a fully informed one.
Living in Northern Ireland, that seems particularly important.
An English man in the Bogside, you can easily imagine, is not a welcome one and my trepidation remained even though I barely skimmed the periphery of the area.
Two things I noticed…
One was that the longer I spent down there, the greater the feeling of excitement grew in me. Excitement tinged with fear. It was thrilling and for the first time I felt I was consciously tasting 'Dark Tourism'. I began to see why some people seek out a place with a grim history. In the case of the Bogside, I'm not sure 'history' is quite right, its past is still part of its present.
The other thing I noticed was that once you've walked down from the city walls to see the murals up-close and rising above you, they take on a greater power.
I live in East Belfast. It's largest Loyalist and not so far from us is an area of intense muralisation (that's not really a word but it'll do for now). The murals of East Belfast of very paramilitary. Lots of badges, crests and gun-toting, balaclava-wearing 'soldiers'.
The murals on the Bogside are more creative and conceptual. At least the ones you see on its edges. They tell stories and have social meaning. There's protest and cause in them. They feel like expressions of the subjugated, oppressed and victimised.
I don't know anyone who suffered or lost people during the troubles, it's very distant from me. But I've learned a fair amount about Irish history and now have some insight into the bigger Irish picture, un-influenced by more direct and contemporary things.
Walking along the Bogside's edge, I felt that there was still reason for dark thoughts to be present in the shadows.
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