As part of North West Cultural Partnership’s (NWCP) latest work, it has joined forces with the County Donegal-based Inishowen Development Partnership with the goal of correcting many of the wrongly held beliefs surrounding the Protestant, Unionist, Loyalist (PUL) and Catholic, Nationalist, Republican (CNR) cultures. 

All thanks to £130,000 from the International Fund for Ireland’s (IFI) Communities in Partnership Programme (CiPP) they were able to roll out the 21-month cross-border ‘Embrace Project’. 

According to Brian Dougherty – a well-known and respected community worker in Derry/ Londonderry, and the CEO of NWCP who works alongside Georgina Kee-McCarter, Tracey McCrory, and Becky Taggart – the project is another vital way of advancing public awareness by encouraging and fostering enhanced understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of dance and music on both sides of the political divide. 

To do this, it has been working with those from the Maiden City’s Protestant Fountain Estate and Donegal’s north-eastern corner of Carndonagh, Clonmany and Moville where the demographic is mostly Catholic. As well as allowing Embrace Project participants to deepen their understanding of the past, activities have also helped lay the groundwork for a more positive future. “Our ethos has always been about using culture – and cultural output – as a means of civic engagement which has many benefits, primarily dispelling myths around pro-Union culture and traditional Irish culture,” says Brian. “Using the vehicle of cultural output made through music, dance and performance allows for inclusivity; it brings people who would not have the chance to perform and work, together. That has a larger impact in terms of the all-important peacebuilding element by giving young people living on either side of the border the chance to really find out what each other’s culture is all about.

We can only really broaden people’s perspectives by challenging misconceptions, which we are doing.  “We’ve been working with the Irish government for a number of years now to also dispel those myths and use this as a platform to have broader discussions on political, civic and constitutional issues. 

All this work is part of a longer-term aim where we work towards having a Dublin City Tattoo at Collins Barracks in 2026 and this project assists and dovetails with that because we are introducing some of the hardest to reach young people on both side of the border and helping them break down barriers.

We would hope that this project can be used as a pathway, so that come 2026, the same young people the Embrace Project has been working with will be involved in the Tattoo in some form,” adds Brian.

The Embrace Project comprises four elements. ‘Up North’ is the first and it engages with 750 pupils from seven Donegal schools through an interactive ‘Ollie and Annie’ video series. Other activities gave people the chance to sample Highland dancing, traditional marching band music, and a Rabbie Burns-based interactive drama. The second aspect – a Talent Development Programme – incorporated flute ensemble workshops. Members travelled to Newtownards last April to receive tuition from the Northern Ireland Flute Band Association before participating in their first solo B-flat flute competition. Having benefited from one-on-one help from renowned professionals, highland dancers created their own choreographies and were even given the opportunity to perform at 10 Downing Street in London, with the then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak among those in attendance. 

Last March – as part of the St Patrick’s Day celebrations – a group of forty musicians from the Marching Bands Association of NI took part in the main Dublin parade, while a group of 21 dancers completed three performances in Collins Barracks’ Festival Quarter. In September, a further six musicians and seven dancers from the project also performed in the heart of Dublin, in front of hundreds of people, as part of the city’s Culture Night. The third element explored costume design in a series of four workshops at the Sollus Centre – the first purpose-built Ulster Scots cultural centre in Northern Ireland – photography and pod cast workshops. The fourth and final strand of the Embrace Project, which involved students from Hofstra University in America – Long Island’s largest private university – and centred on dialogue and discussion. Themes that were explored covered parading, young people’s concerns about the future, cultural expression, and how sporting codes can be used as a peacebuilding tool.

 Other activities included heightening peace awareness through education and volunteering, and special visits from distinguished or well-known guest speakers such as retired Irish sprinter and former Paralympic gold medal winner, Jason Smyth MBE. “Our challenge now is to have the resources to do more of this,” says Brian, who welcomed the Taoiseach, Simon Harris, to NWCP’s offices in the Fountain during a one-day visit to Derry/Londonderry in September.

“The programme is incredibly innovative because it breaks down boundaries, it looks at joint collaborations, it modernises Irish dance and music and Highland dance and music and combines the two. The big hurdle we have now is maintaining the momentum and making sure the young people we have, who have signed up to the programme, stay involved, that they are not lost, so they can continue this pathway. “As I have said, this is groundbreaking work and that is highlighted by the fact both the British and Irish governments asked us to perform at events hosted by them. Without the Communities in Partnership Programme those opportunities just would not have been possible because of the sums of money that is involved. Even before that, the collaborations with the young people would not have existed and we would not have had the resources to put on viable performances, performances that were of a very high standard thanks to our creative base at Newgate and working with extremely talented partners.” 

He adds: “If they work well, which it does, the impact of the Communities in Partnership Programme should never be felt in isolation – it should not just be about the participants but rather the positive message it sends out – and the Embrace Project is a perfect example of how the funding from the International Fund for Ireland has allowed us to do that. It has opened doors for us that we did not think were possible and would not have happened without the investment we received.”