The Detail on Schools

The Detail is a news website for Northern Ireland. Its staff do not just write traditional journalism. They also run a kind of story that may well become more common as we entre the era of 'big data'. They make news by analysing and collating statistical information. Recently The Detail has looked at rates of repossession, studied cancer prevalence by postcode and compared emergency service response times across Northern Ireland. Often The Detail displays its findings using online maps. This is the case with the report, "How our school leavers fare - by school and by postcode". Below I have posted the two screenshots that cover Limavady.

On this map every secondary school in Northern Ireland is described by a selection of stats. These include the percentage of students who are entitled to school meals (a rough indicator of economic well-being) and the percentage who go onto further education.





We have come to expect a religious divide in Northern Ireland's education system. Towns often have a Catholic School and a Protestant one. Sure enough, many of Northern Ireland's small-to-medium sized towns have two secondary schools. However, zoom it and a different divide is revealed. Class or relative wealth seems just as important a story. Schools with high rates of free school meals send low numbers of students to university. Use their map to roam town to town and this correlation holds true, regardless of the school's place on the religious spectrum.

Derry's Gardens

Derry/Londonderry is UK city of culture this year. Specially created artist's gardens are open to the public now around the city. Artists Locky Morris, Katie Holten, Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey have planted the gardens in houses, city yards and on rooftops. There are ten in all. One is mapped in this charming illustration.



From UK City of Culture website:

The rationale of the project is to create a city centre 'garden trail’ that changes along with the people and the town they are situated in. This is particularly important in a city centre context which generally emphasises consumerism, the manufactured and which affords little time for reflection, conversation and growth.

Fictional Ulster: In Development

I'm almost done with Version One of Fictional Ulster, a map of places created by writers. Thank you to Patricia Craig who told me about a few locations I might not have discovered otherwise. Patricia, who edited The Ulster Anthology, probably knows more about Ulster literature than anyone else alive. She has read all the bad and forgotten stuff as well, which is useful as fame or literary quality play no part in getting on the Fictional Ulster map.

A preview, from Mid-Ulster

Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography

I am delighted that The Map of Connections has been included in Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography by Colin Graham. This is a substantial and authoritative publication which, interestingly, looks at both gallery photography and journalistic work from Belfast archives.

There will be a public lecture by publication's author on 7 June from 12noon to 1pm in the MAC, Belfast. Many photographs featured in the book are currently on show there.

The book was published this month.

I like Graham's reading of The Map of Connections. He wonders if the border's connection points might be its "truest existence". That a place might be best seen through its contradictions was something I often considered when developing the map.

See The Map of Connections here. This page also features other maps I have created.

The Model City

Forum for Alternative Belfast is a community interest company that campaigns for a better connected built environment in Belfast. On the 2nd of May an exhibition showcasing their work opens in The Golden Thread Gallery. The show features a three dimensional model of Belfast's centre.

Making the model city.

Four coats of acrylic were required, then a high-viscosity top-coat.

In the model, vacant sites will be highlighted in and proposals made for how these sits could be converted and made to live again. Painting the mini buildings was a time consuming job. Forum for Alternative Belfast asked for volunteers to help them with it. I assisted one day and it was fascinating to see the model in development.

The exhibition will run until June 8th. It will be accompanied by a public talks. Go to The Golden Thread Gallery's website for details.

To the Waters and the Wild

CROW (City Right of Way) is a collaboration between artists Mike Hogg and Aisling O'Beirn. They organise monthly walks, usually in areas of Belfast. The walks are free and open to anyone. Participants often suggest the routes or they are developed in collaboration with other organisations. This month I joined one of their walks, heading away from Strandmillis along the Lagan's towpath. About 20 people formed our party, a good percentage of them being children. They youngsters enjoyed the snow and, luckily, none of them fell in the river. We went as far as a wooden area in Belvoir Park, the oaks there are said to be the oldest in Belfast.

The route

Waiting for the kids to catch up

Among the oaks, Justin Nicholl (of Grow, a North Belfast community garden cooperative) identified an abundance of wild garlic. I brought some home and added it to my dinner.

Links: CROW (City Right of Way) and Grow Community Garden.

Ulster's Diamonds

I grew up near Donegal Town. Locals always called the open area in the middle of the town The Diamond. It was mainly used for car parking and was more of a triangle than a diamond. Streets ran from three corners

 

A map of Donegal Town from 1901.

 

 Coleraine, 1611.

Lately I've learned that there are many other town diamonds in Ulster. The centre of Ulster's plantation towns were usually given that name. The outer limits of Coleraine might vaguely suggest a diamond but its central zone, the part that is actually called The Diamond, is a rectangle. This map from 1611 shows it well. Why did the term diamond come into use?

 

Postcard of Coleraine.

Diamonds were the town's market areas and markets were central to the Plantation project. It was believed that control, regulation and commerce would help build a new society. I wonder if the hard, angular associations of the word diamond appealed, in some fundamental way, to the designers of the plantation? Still now, I feel, the word diamond suggests a nexus, lines and angles meeting in one unbreakable centre. Such a solid word was bound to appeal to those wishing to anchor themselves into the ground.