At the NI Tourism Conference 2024, Dearbhail & George are joined by the following local representatives for a facilitated panel discussion about the importance of ‘Place’ :
Dr Paul Mullan – National Lottery Heritage Fund,
Kerrie Sweeney – Maritime Belfast Trust
Aeidin McCarter – Derry City & Strabane District Council.
and we’re we’re keeping George on because we’re just going to stay with that theme of placemaking and I suppose custodianship or stewardship of what you already have which George has spoken so powerful too so please give a very very warm welcome to Dr Paul Mullen who is from the National Heritage Lottery fund to ker Sweeney H from the maritime Belfast trust and Idan mcarter from Derry City andan sister counc up you come thank you so much um Paul you’re going to um suffer from proximity bias uh so I I’ll pick on you first but um obviously we know that placemaking is really really crucial for attracting tourists but and enhancing their experiences but for you look what is it it’s it’s both a tangible and intangible thing what is it that makes a place special or how do you go about being a Memory Maker well I mean listening to George talk made me think about um a talk I’d been to down in vermana um about 10 years ago and some of you might have heard of this particular individual uh uh Henry glassy and Henry glassy is one of the great folklorists of the world he’s an American and uh he’s written many many books five of them abide Ireland five of them linked to the village of AR in formana so this um great Corpus of of his work uh uh is quite phenomenal and his his importance in folklore is quite phenomenal he was asked a question um by somebody in the audience you know what is so special about Arie and his response to that was I could have gone anywhere in the north of Ireland and been able to uh reveal the depth of the fascinating stories of people uh uh and their lives so you know that that that’s to me what heritage is all about and that’s uh uh this sense of place the sense of really valuing where you are from your stories all of those amazing narratives which when somebody comes to visit you you can kind of embrace with I’m glad you said amazing narratives and not Grand ones absolutely very conscious of that point you you you made earlier so to me that’s what placemaking is is all about and one of the things that we all learned I think through the whole kind of covid period was the important importance of the local and I mean this is where in the the South they did it so well they had they had this kind of uh scheme of uh you know five minute Heritage encouraging you to go to walk in you know you’re 5K or 2K absolutely when you’re and you know we learned uh uh well well uh some of us it wasn’t for the first time but many people learned uh for the first time what their the power of their own locality by having to go out there and repeat those walks day after day actually they began to open open their eyes and they began to see things and uh George was also talking about the idea of um um he mentioned embodied carbon but there’s something else that buildings also and places also embody and that is memory this is kind of embod how can we unlock these really powerful stories about where we are from and uh how can we sort of really uh engage people in that sort of way and that’s to me is the the power of Heritage and again back to George I mean when we lose buildings we lose those stories we lose those connections to our uh uh uh great grandparents our great great grand parents all of that can I can I just pick up on one thing of that sorry to jump in because we’re probably have a bigger debate is that a lot today we’ve talked about kind of importing tourists you know bringing people in and getting that investment and filling hotels and everything but I think it’s also about exporting those stories and I think one of the problems that I’ve seen like in my home City in sundland is that because those buildings have been demolished and they’ve gone and lots of things have been lost the young people that I talk to in the city have got no idea even existed they don’t even know about those stories they don’t even know that Sunland was one of the biggest kind of ship building places in the world at one point and actually if you educate young people in history and storytelling then when they go on holiday and they go abroad they become the storytellers to then encourage people from overseas to want to come to Islands so I think that kind of import export is really really important when it comes to story and like mean just on on that Carrie like mean it’s hard to imagine that 20 years ago the concept of where we are and Titanic Belfast it was only identified as one of you know five kind of key potential areas and here we are 20 years later and it has been an incredible success story but how important is that actually just that going in and building new stories maintaining it you know for local as well as for for international news it’s it’s key really to the success um oh definitely you know whenever Titanic Belfast was a concept it was about repositioning Northern Ireland and its story and and how do we take this International story of Titanic and and say that Belfast was the birth place you know so that um you know so it’s really um taking um Titanic Belfast and and looking um at that location and building something at the top of the Titanic and the Olympic Subways um right beside the Magnificent drawing offices where the naval Architects actually worked um so giving that visit the experience to go there as well as um the Hamilton do the importance of having those physical buildings still there exactly and whenever George was saying like we lost a lot of our Maritime and Industrial Heritage as well so if it wasn’t for Titanic Belfast um coming along when it did in 2012 um we have now safeguarded our um scheduled monu monuments the CHP ways um the amazing drawing officers the um Hamilton dock the Thompson dock we’ve got the SS dematic which is the last tender ship um the last White Star Line ship in the world and visitors can actually get on it and and then we have this amazing backdrop here um that visitors can come and experience that we are still a working port and Harland and wolf today are still very much working on SES um and so whenever we see visitors coming down here they’re taking photos of the buildings they’re taking photos of the sways but they’re also taking photos of har Mo and um and there’s nothing like it anywhere else in the world um only here in Belfast and a big thing for us um at the time of uh developing Titanic Belfast was also engaging The Wider community and um Hardington wolf at a point in time employed over 20,000 men and women and it was really important that we connect those people to this story um because we’re telling their story um so a big success of Titanic Belfast is how they have taken those stories and even the whole all um the the Staffing uh the Titanic crew um hopefully if you get a chance to see um some of the exhibitions uh this afternoon if you haven’t been in recently um but those stories have been filtered through and every single member of Staff right from the Senior Management to the local crew are are the storytellers um you know and and we’ve had great experience of like one example in Titanic Hotel just bringing some of those stories alive um was whenever we we check about oh several hundred of former employees that actually used to work in the drawing offices they were the naval Architects and we took them around the building um when it was completely derelict it was on that wrist register um you know it was falling into Decay and uh we knew that we had to save it but they they were telling us um their stories and one of the stories that they told us was um up in the second floor which was another drawing offices and it was sort of the 1960s sort of office um that was just made out of wooden dividers and they said you were only ever brought into that office if you were to get a bollocks and you had done something wrong and uh whenever the interior designer came in to plan the whole of um the the restaurants and the interior design of the hotel um she took that um office and put it in the middle of uh Titanic belf first now their main restaurant and now that’s the and it’s called the bollock and box and you bicket for um private dining and but we’ve had so many former employ and the part just of of those sort of individual stories that have informed yeah and the visitors come back and the former employees also book up for special occasions and I and I suppose that’s the beauty about um connecting people with place and that’s where the magic happens and look me few eing der has never been shy about uh telling its own stories it’s own some amazing storytellers right across all of the um the culture and the Arts and particularly with Halloween can you tell me the role of the local Authority and John was mentioning earlier John was mentioning about the importance of local authorities now in really really instilling that uh sense of place yeah well we are certainly very lucky and there and Stan our um local population are not sh by telling us um giving us feedback and telling us what the what the stories are and what the what the place means to them um local authorities I think have uh have a an really important role to play um and not least our own Council area I suppose because we probably are so removed from maybe central government um that people certainly see the local Authority as being the Authority for for absolutely everything so you know over the last number of years I think particularly since the review public administration and the new councils new sort of super councils as they referred to coming into to being and in 2015 and the community plan and powers that local authorities have um there’s there certainly is a statutory role for local authorities in to bring Partners together and that’s a a big thing about what um what all the local authorities do and work in partners with all the statutary agencies you know not least touris of Northern Ireland on other government departments and that um we as a local Authority have you know been lucky we have a strong really strong sense of place particularly in particularly in the city and now right throughout the district right into the sparin um we have always operated on a really strong partnership basis and we’ve seen some of the key you know I’ve been in my role about eight nearly eight years now and I know when I started I was to you know I was sort of given this REM but it was post city of culture and we’d had a huge investment and huge profile of the place particularly the city as part of um being you know the first UK city of culture um and I was sort of hand this remit of you know you’ve got to take this on and you’ve got to lead our tourism arts and culture sector and I thought my God what am I going to do with this um how am I going to how am I going to step out of that that massive investment but one of the amazing things about that is that as a local Authority our local people our our citizens and our elected members recognize the importance of the place they re they they had a absolutely renewed sense of confidence you know they understood the the benefits of um of arts and culture this understood the benefits of Heritage and our local Authority you know invested I mean we um my Department’s budget is now about 7 and a half million invested into into tourism and particularly into Heritage um arts and culture right across the board um and in a really strong Festival events program that’s where we’ve grown you know Dair Halloween to be um to have the profile that it has but what we focused on was looking at what do we have you know I I I I I do remember might have the same levels of Finance you have to look at their resources absolutely we had to it was it was practicalities as well but also we had to be really true and authentic to the place and I mean I do remember some people saying to me you know Belfast have that Big Shiny Titanic building we need to get something like that here you know what and I remember thinking well the Titanic is is amazing and I hope car car doesn’t may me say this but and the building this building is f fantastic but we have you know we we 400y old walls we have that are people are coming from right across the world to see we have so much history and Heritage we have so many stories to tell we probably don’t need a big shiny new thing we probably need to look at maybe shining up some of the things we already have and just starting to tell that story more cohesively working together with our partners and that’s where you know that’s where we see now the wall City experiences front and center in our city deal um um proposal um also the you know with the the new Dar there in the North Atlantic opening on on Abington I mean Abington that has seen a transformational journey since 2013 um it’s I mean we’re the sort of last piece of the puzzle I can see some of the tourism na colleagues there who’ve been on this long journey with us and not least I should thank while we’re I’m on the stage with them Paul Mullen and colleagues from National Lottery Heritage fund who have really stuck with us through that process um to open and we will open in 26 the new museum at aington telling the story of people and place um and showcasing the the really extensive Museum collection that we had and just something Carrie something that George was mentioned was um you know when you alienate or disengage the community or you offend them with you know with a a lack of respect for the Heritage or or you let those kind of key assets full when you kind of look at the plans for here from the maritime mile to a full 10 kmet Waterfront you’ve talked about the importance of you know the stories and the local stories and particularly for Generations who may have worked here or lived here and are moving on but there’s a lot of stakeholders uh to manage there and you’re trying to get a balance between sustainability the nature residential commercial the cultural everything um how do you go about doing that and build and having sustainable relationships over a long period of time that’s a really OD question that one that’s really unfair great well Generation generation takes ages thought it’s was a question you you should answer but it’s it’s about the relationships well for us um we set up a tourism task group recently sorry um and uh it was very much about bringing all of those stakeholders together um so we have different land owners we’ve got public sector interests um uh and it was really about um joining everybody up together and and having One overarching Vision um so I so it’s it’s really about Vision you know and that also goes back to you know what was the success of Titanic belf Fest you know it was a joined up Vision between all parties so um we brought in a team actually from Copenhagen and they took a whole fresh look at the waterfront um they initially called it a story of dead ends that you know and it all needed to be connected up together and um and it took us a good 12 to 18 months to work that process um but we’ve finally got there and and again it’s not about new shiny buildings it’s about the the bits that join it all up together um the play areas the public Arts the cycling trails um the access onto the water the pontoons and and some of them are going back to the earlier presentation the TNTs that that they’re quick wins that they’re things that are actually doable and achievable but collectively um we have 10,000 um ERS of active Waterfront that connects um Titanic quarter in with our city center but also to our neighborhood communities and then with the neighborhood communities um we also developed um what we call the maritime Belfast story plan so um and it was over Co we engaged with all of our neighborhood um uh residential areas and went in and asked them you know what does the maritime and Industrial heritage mean to them and and we’ve mapped it all on a map but and coming out of that we’ve got sort of three key themes um around sort of taming and reclaiming the river um livehoods and neighborhoods um trading making and innovating and we’re using those themes now to engage with all new developers um so that those stories are actually coming through some of the design because again a lot of those stories are just memories and we need a way to capture those memories and some of the new developments on site so that could be naming of a building it could be naming of a street it could be local um public artwork it’s more interpretation all those former workers that we’ve worked with um over the years they’ve actually given us lots of artifacts so we’re looking at how do we put those artifacts into the public realm and have touch points um so that we’re again connecting people to stories and look I mean Paul you can’t please everyone all of the time and often the past and identity and story and place can be contested um in our own home place but it seems that we’re finding ways whether it’s through Heritage whether it is through culture music whatever it is we’re finding ways to celebrate that difference so is that a sign of maturity and success on our part um I think so I think so I mean we’ve had you know some of the deepest of Divisions in this particular society and uh we can still find ways that uh easily to to to to divide us um but we’ve also started to find a way way of working through that by recognizing um that there are multiple stories out there it’s not just about the story of me and my community and who I am but that the past is actually quite complex and whenever you try to sort of strip it down to kind of binary elements of Us and Them you actually missed the point about the past if anything I think we should Deep dive more confidently into our our troubled past and it was you know great to hear the minister talking about the they’re bringing out the political stories because I think you know that that’s a real real opportunity not to give parts of our community chances to uh uh uh give propaganda about their background but actually to to to to reveal something about themselves and who who they were they were and help them I think the key thing is helping people from uh uh uh uh different backgrounds to learn how to be able to communicate to U more than just people like them and I think that’s that’s it’s a democratic opportunity the more that we can learn about each other the more that we can be prepared to sit down and listen and empathize to to others who have very very different experiences to ours the more confident we will be in telling our authentic story and that’s what this is all about it’s all about authenticity and the more we root the tourism opportunity uh in authenticity the more we create a real distinctive sense of place and to me that’s at the heart of place making I don’t know if anybody saw earlier on Alice moner’s um her presentation and they were kind of looking at the the factors that kind of make it into place and at the end was sort of advocacy and I don’t know if anybody know noticed it was a little heart you know um where and I felt that George that sort of really kind of spoked in terms of you know in promoting this island what they’re actually looking for is that kind of heart experience yeah I mean look there’s a lot of heart and there’s a lot of passion I talked about that before um in Northern Ireland I just want to talk about the architecture a little bit more because that’s obviously my my job is that that what worries me is that when it when a master plan for regeneration is produced um you talk about the stories being complicated but actually any master plan in any regeneration is really difficult takes a long time you talked about the stakeholders but you’re talking about building you you’re talking about investment you know sometimes people want to push too fast and say well we can get investment in if we do this sort of building but is that the right sort of building for the master plan so you you’re constantly juggling kind of people intentions use yeah but also I think style and this might not sound that important but it is for me that in a global world I see so many Master plans where all the buildings look the same doesn’t matter where they are and it drives me mad to be honest with you I think we talk about the history of a place and and the history of the buildings but every day we’re creating new history you know what we did yesterday was history you know the building site that happened the next door you know you’re creating history there what what stands there is going to be there for many years the style of the place that talks about vernacular architecture what makes it unique to that City what makes it so special you know in historical terms if you went if you go to Amsterdam you’re going to see a certain type of building if you go to Paris you’re going to see you know their fantastic Terraces in their streets and their parks and their squares you know if you go to Newcastle you know you’re going to see the key side and a certain type of building material being used certain stones or certain bricks and what bothers me now in a globalized world as most Master plans are starting to look the same where actually I think we should be really understanding the buildings of the past and them inspiring new buildings of the future so that if you’re talking about tourism in 50 years time 60 years time 80 years time people are come to see unique buildings in Belfast on Northern Ireland not just more Global stuff and and that’s been um Eden that’s really what you’re doing in darpan you’re leaning into the existing Heritage whether that’s through the buildings whether it’s through the walls to and you’re really sort of leveraging that whilst also you know keeping an eye to to to the new shiny things yeah I mean that’s certainly what we’ve what we’ve tried to do um and certainly what we’ve tried to do with the with the new Museum and certainly I mean we’ve had a fabulous opportunity there at at the ebrington site with the just the sheer volume of historic buildings that are there but yeah and I mean there’s we there’s fabulous Partners right right throughout um right throughout the city working on things like I mean the inner city trust and have done phenomenal work there’s I mean there’s so many Heritage buildings that work in colums Hall are doing um all of our heritage venues that we’re working with right throughout the city and District there’s a real culture I think um particularly within in and around the wall city of celebrating um the architectural history and of of you know being mindful of that going into the future um and you know I think increasingly I I think there’s been a shift as well in the last number of years I think overall as a society and certainly in the Northwest there’s there’s an increasing sort of more populous awareness of the importance of architectural Heritage and how that should shape how we plan for the future um and I certainly as a local Authority I think we see that coming from our citizens and coming from our elected members they’re reflecting that and that’s um you know that is and and the flip side of that I suppose into our wider City and district is there’s an increased appreciation and awareness of the importance and that a lot of that come out of Co of our natural environment you know we see that in the the um right out throughout the Spar I mean we’re working on number of our Council colleagues here from our the we’re working on a partnership with three other councils in The Spar region um and they’re about to get their first um the their we’ve just announced funding for um the first a andb management plan for The Spar in 50 years of its existence um there is you know we’ve we’ve just you’ll have seen some of the promotion around the the Giants that we’ve put in there the dambo Giants so there is a real I think shift in every day you know I usually know I know usually if my family are starting to talk to me about things like the importance of old buildings and probably there’s something going on it it’s Landing um car when I I um particularly in big cities where you have got taxi drivers you know migrants who are you know working all over cities I always ask to tell me a place where tourists don’t go tell me a restaurant or a building or somewhere that’s off the Beaten Track you know because I try and get a balance between seeing the big stuff but also maybe going off the Beaten Track and I think one of the fabulous things that I’m even constantly rediscovering uh when I um tour at home is we places you might have heard of or just they’re small more intimate experiences that are equally as valid like kind of like George as Americana how important when you’re looking down the tracks of 20 to 30 your generation which will inevitably involve new bills or Restorations how important is it to get those kind of small local experiences that maybe not even AI is going to be able to track us down hopefully not in the future um well I think it’s critical um as supp one of the terms that um tourism Ireland and TNI are using as well is the slow visit and um you know and a lot of talk today about um Regional spread but also within Belfast you know we have an issue of spreading visitors so we’ve got you know a bulk of visitors that come to Titanic Belfast but they’re not going to The Wider um Waterfront communities and um so we’ve got like real special areas on the waterfront like sailor toon and we’ve got St St Joseph’s Church um they’re working on plans to turn it into a whole cultural hub nowhere do we currently tell the story of the dockers on this side of the river we’re telling the story of Shipyard workers and um you know and there’s such Synergy between both stories and um it’s really important that we um we really Zone in on that and support them to develop now it won’t be the same volume of visitors that come to Titan Belfast but if we can disperse um visitors over to salor tan in terms of what it would do in terms of regeneration of that area and give them an income um you know that that’s critical um and then as well the whole of our Maritime mile um again some people might get the opportunity to go this afternoon up to Titanic Distillery um you know but again you know we need to spread our visitors so that whenever they they go back again they haven’t just spent you know four hours or half a day in Belfast that they’ve spent two or three days in the city and really important that we connect in with the city center as well because the um really the success and the life of the city center is linked to what’s happening on this Waterfront because it it will eventually become part of the whole city center experience and um being able to discover hubs and and little moments of um visitor experiences are really critical well but George really articulated very well I felt was that sustainability has connotations well beyond kind of ESG and environment and climate it’s actually about sustaining Heritage in memory as well as well as sort of exporting our stories how do we sort of um get in support individual communities here to speak to the wider Community across the island because we’re also tourists um on our own Islands well I mean that’s something that um sort of we at the national lottery Heritage fund have always been trying to do we we have uh uh programs where communities can come to us to uh help them to uncover their their their story and um sort of push that out um more widely one of the examples I mean I mentioned um Arie um earlier um they had a project with us called battles bricks and bridges um uh about uh six years ago and um it involved kind of an archaeological uh uh discovery of a of a um a battle site from the n9e wars and that particular project won the best um archaeological project uh UK wide in 2016 so you know it’s all there it’s there waiting to be res uh uh uh discovered and it is about confidence um that that people have in within their communities to be able to recognize that actually people are interested in what they’ve got uh uh to say and it’s connecting in with everybody else in this room to help amplify that from the guest house owner uh who will say why don’t you go and look at that or did you know about this um it it is all there it’s just about uh kind of opening the door to uh uh uh um opening that particular Pandora’s Box George um so much of what your work actually when you think about it is yes it’s about the buildings and restoration it’s actually just all about Excavating the stories what’s what’s your favorite one that you’ve worked on your favorite restoration KY uh um there’s actually been too many to be honest there’s been some brilliant ones I remember one was a Victorian water tower that I did in Norfolk I mean what made that really exciting project was the guy who did it he was called David Foster and I first filmed with him in think 2005 and he bought a Victorian water tower in the woods that everybody just thought was a complete waste of time and completely impractical to live in um and he spent many years turning it into a house much to his wife’s despair because it was a painful he’s an eccentric mad crazy inventor but what’s beautiful actually is I’ve just filmed with him about four weeks ago he’s bought an all Victorian Railway carriage and he’s doing another project so he kind of never stops really but one that really sticks him my head apart from David is there’s a lovely couple called David and Margaret uh in North umberland just there one of my favorite um historic houses which is craigside National Trust property um owned by the Duke of North umberland he used to own all the Mills flower mills along the river and David and Margaret used to go wgan uh basically was a fantastic Village in town where they’d go wan every Sunday and they used to pass this mail and Margaret used to say oh I’d love to live in a building like that one day and they lived in a fairly orderly the would mind me saying this a fa ordinary three-bedroom house in Whitley Bay and one day David spotted that it was coming off for auction that the Duke of Northland was selling an offer at an auction and he went and did a deal to buy it before it went to auction got it at a much lower price than he thought he would have to pay and then surprised Margaret and said I’ve bought our dream house and spent the next three years restoring it together and that you know even if you if you ever go to Rothbury in North umland go down to the old mail and knock on the door and they’ll give you a cup of tea and a bacon s and and they’ll tell you because they’re so proud of it because they genuinely pinch themselves all the time that they cannot believe that they’re living in that building and everybody does have that and they and they’ll just say but we’re custodians I mean that’s they don’t see them as owners they see them as being custodians building and it’s going to be passed on to somebody else and it’s just a another chapter in their story that’s the job of so many people here today that stewardship before I let all of you go just very very quickly um in terms of that the the stewardship and managing the story and both growing tourism but also minding local communities what’s your key piece of advice for each one of you Paul I’ll start with you again believe in your ideas I think really and um because a lot of you know a lot of people they just don’t think their story matters actually it does yeah it’s a key thing car I working in Partnership and collaboration you know when you see a room like this full of people the amount of opportunities to work together and places only happen when you have people working together to to make them um Thrive and Alive brilliant and fin I was would say seize the opportunity you know the tourism industry is about really the tourism businesses um and all of what we do as agencies and everything else is to support that to enable them enable all of the businesses to grow and Thrive and to support the economy so I would say seize the opportunity and and Thrive George if not in song the final word to you I’m not going to sing it definitely not um mine would just be just remember what makes a place unique you know what is that unique story and that’s whether it’s the history style of the architecture of the buildings the people the place it it does genuinely worry me that in the globalized worlds so many things are becoming the same and a lot of people will say well oh let’s do what they did in that country or let’s do what they did in that country and then they’ll take the idea and it doesn’t work because it doesn’t apply to that place you know Bast and Northern irelands are very very unique place and you need to celebrate that through everything you do absolutely we listen to George to eating to carry and Paul thank you very very very much thanks for being with us this afternoon I’ll let you all yes let you all head down