Ireland’s Border Culture is a groundbreaking open access digital archive of the literature, visual art, memoir and film of Ireland’s ‘cultural borderscape’ from 1921 to the present day.   

170 examples of literary and visual culture from and about the Irish border are featured in the archive ranging from Big Tom’s Back to Castleblayney to Lisa O’Neill’s No Train To Cavan, and Spike Milligan’s Puckoon to Rita Duffy’s United Ireland Tea Towel.

The project was launched on the opening day of Trinity’s Arts and Humanities Research Festival,  a week-long programme of free talks and screenings spotlighting the fascinating work being undertaken by the university’s arts and humanities researchers.

“Ireland’s border is not just a political or constitutional division, it is a region of distinct creativity. Ireland’s Border Culture project aims to document the richness and variety of references to the border and understand partition’s effect on a unique kind of cultural productivity. The selected examples illuminate Ireland’s ‘cultural borderscape’ and represent the border as an imaginative and creatively productive space,” explains Trinity-lead of the project Eve Patten,  Professor of English and Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub.

Brian Newman's photographic project Association (2010-2024)

Border Lodges, Brian Newman's photographic project Association (2010-2024) 

Having spent much of her life on the Fermanagh-Donegal border she was conscious of the “gap between fossilised, top-down perceptions of a fatally divided society, and the grass-roots activities – from local theatre to landscape painting—that characterised the vibrant communities of the area.”

The project is a collaboration between the Trinity Long Room Hub and the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast. Inspired by the centenary of partition and the refocusing of attention on the border’s history as part of the Brexit Negotiations, the project received funding from the Higher Education Authority’s North-South Shared Island research programme.

Garrett Carr and Eve Patten, Ireland's Border Culture Project

Project PIs Garrett Carr (L) and Eve Patten (R)

The website includes extracts from numerous writers, including poets Louis MacNeice, Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon and Eiléan ni Chuilleanáin, and novelists Pat McCabe, Jennifer Johnston, John McGahern and Michelle Gallon.

It also features music, including country and western favourites Big Tom and the Mainliners, Dundalk punk poet Jinx Lennon and the 1964 Clones Fleadh Cheoil. Visual arts is also well represented including Gretta Bowen’s 1940s faux naif painting The Customs Examination and work by Rita Duffy, Desmond Reid, Mairead McClean and others.

Shiro Masuyama, The Borderline project (2013)

Shiro Masuyama, The Borderline project (2013

Most of the curation was undertaken by the project’s postdoctoral researcher Dr Orla Fitzpatrick, a specialist in Irish visual culture, who also included fascinating photography pieces including Brian Newman’s evocative sequence on forgotten borderland Orange Lodges and Kate Nolan’s brooding shots of the Donegal town of Pettigo, which straddles the border. She also tracked down stills from Kabosh theatre company productions and the Brexit television ‘mockumentary’ Soft Border Patrol.

Rita Duffy, United Ireland Tea Towel (2016)

The editing team included Queen’s researcher Dr Aisling Reid, who sourced, among other items, memoir extracts from politician and writer Cahir Healy, who was interned on the Argenta prison ship in Belfast Lough from 1922 – 1924 for his anti-partitionist activities.

The research team hope this important resource will continue to develop and expand. Dr Carr, Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast has piloted the site already in schools and universities and is keen to see how different users will respond to the material and perhaps suggest future inclusions.

 “In capturing some of the artistic legacy of the border’s 100-year existence, the project has spotlighted the significance of writers, painters, photographers and film-makers in articulating the full complexity of life around the border region. We hope that this resource will be used by teachers, students, cultural historians and policy-makers, and members of the public at home and abroad, who are interested in Ireland’s border experience.”

Visit the website here: https://borderculture.net

Related links:

Irish Times: 

From Big Tom to John McGahern: New digital archive celebrates Border’s artistic legacy

RTÉ Radio 1:

New digital archive celebrates arts from the border