To mark 21 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, an important new initiative begins on Good Friday, 19th April, 2019. A series of podcasts will be broadcast twice a week, seeking answers to questions about the future of Northern Ireland and the border counties.
The objective is to promote a wider, more inclusive and engaged conversation about how we make progress and further solidify peace and create a genuinely shared and integrated society. We want that discussion to be mutually respectful, to be forward focused and positive. It has to consider the real challenges our society faces in the coming years and be practical and honest in how to address these.
This initiative is the result of a partnership between the Holywell Trust peace and reconciliation charity based in Derry/Londonderry, the Slugger O’Toole website and the funders, the Community Relations Council.
The first podcast will be released on Good Friday, 19th April, 2019, with an interview with Bishop Ken Good, the Church of Ireland bishop for Derry and Raphoe (a cross border diocese). On Easter Monday, the second interview will be released with former Victims Commissioner and former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, Mike Nesbitt MLA.
Future podcasts will include interviews with well-known community sector figures Linda Ervine, Alan McBride, Avila Kilmurray, Peter Sheridan and Conal McFeely, as well as MLAs Claire Sugden, Clare Bailey, Simon Hamilton and Máirtín Ó Muilleoir. Republic of Ireland politicians Fergus O’Dowd TD and Senators Mark Daly and Frances Black will feature in other future podcasts.
The podcasts will be compered by Gerard Deane, chief executive of the Holywell Trust, with interviews conducted by journalist Paul Gosling. The format is influenced by the success of the Holywell Trust Brexit podcasts. The interviews focus on four questions: how do we strengthen civic society in Northern Ireland; how do we create a more shared and integrated society; how should we deal with the past, while promoting reconciliation; and how do we have the ‘constitutional conversation’ in ways that are positive, respectful and not damaging or threatening.
Under the partnership arrangement, the podcasts will be available on the Slugger O’Toole website, as well as the Holywell Trust website. Sections of the podcasts and interviews may be available to other outlets by arrangement. A series of articles based on the interviews will also be published by the Holywell Trust and Slugger O’Toole.