Context 156 – which reports on the 2018 Belfast School, ‘Our Shared Heritage’ – highlights activities, talks and tours that range across much of Northern Ireland, and if you would like a peek into an example of community heritage challenges, one ‘Thursday tour’ treated delegates to a visit to North Belfast, led by Shane Quinn of Belfast Buildings Trust, and Paula Reynolds of Belfast Charitable Trust, looking at buildings and case studies in this area of the city.
The tour showed delegates the particularly notable case where an Orange Hall (of the Protestant Orange Order) sits by two housing estates which have predominantly Catholic residents. So how does one maintain a building which has been the subject of attack, and explore the possibility of opening up the facility to the wider community?
School delegate reporting on the tour, Rosemary Thornber, notes how a new organisation has been formed to manage historic buildings within this area, which is the most deprived ward in Northern Ireland. The cluster aims to attempt to find users of the buildings that will engage the community and assist with their maintenance and conservation.
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