Latest news with #EastBelfast
BBC News
15-07-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Comber: Children's camp cancelled over involvement of GAA club
A cross-community sports summer camp in County Down has been cancelled after criticism of the involvement of a "small group of children from a GAA club".North Down Cricket Club, based in Comber, had planned to host the event for young people from different backgrounds, including some from East Belfast GAA. However, there was opposition from a number of local residents and a local Orange Lodge that said there were concerns about the "perceived move of the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) into the local community".The cricket club said following comment on social media, the "spirit of the camp was at risk of being lost" and it had chosen not to proceed. Club wanted children 'to try something new' North Down Cricket Club said it had been an important part of Comber since 1857 "with deep roots, proud traditions, and a strong sense of identity".It added: "At North Down, we welcome people from all walks of life. "Cricket is a global game made up of many faiths and cultures, and that is reflected here at the green. What unites us is the game."The sport summer camp was created to give young people from different backgrounds a chance to enjoy cricket, try something new, and simply have fun. "The plan was to involve 10 different local sports and community groups — including organisations supporting ethnic minority communities — with the aim of building friendships through shared activity. "A small group of children from a GAA club was just one part of that broader mix."As reaction to the event grew, we felt the spirit of the camp was at risk of being lost. "With regret — and out of respect for all involved — we chose not to proceed," the club's statement added. Lodge says some GAA actions are viewed as 'divisive' Goldsprings of Comber Orange lodge posted a message on social media saying that "many local residents have raised reservations about the GAA's cultural and historical affiliations"."Specifically, there is unease regarding aspects of the organisation that have, in the past, celebrated or commemorated individuals associated with paramilitary activity."For a shared and peaceful future, such actions are viewed by some as divisive and incompatible with a truly inclusive society."Residents have made it clear that until the GAA takes meaningful steps to ensure it is fully inclusive and sensitive to the history and identity of the Protestant, Unionist and Loyalist (PUL) community, its presence in Comber would be viewed with regret and opposition by many in the Comber area," the lodge added. "This issue is not about opposition to sport, but about ensuring that all organisations operating in shared spaces demonstrate respect for all traditions and work proactively towards reconciliation and mutual understanding."The Orange Order declined to comment.
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Van Morrison's former primary to become a special school
Sir Van Morrison's former primary school in east Belfast is set to become a special school campus. Elmgrove school on the Beersbridge Road closed in 2024, with pupils and staff moving to a new building nearby. The Beersbridge Road site is right beside "the hollow", made famous in Sir Van's song Brown Eyed Girl. The former Elmgrove school building is now set to house pupils from Greenwood House special school in east Belfast from September 2026. Greenwood House has announced plans to expand its pupil numbers by using Elmgrove as a dual campus alongside its existing site close to the Newtownards Road. The Education Authority (EA) has said the school's move "will help the overall position" on school places. Greenwood House currently has about 70 pupils aged between three and six, but its expansion proposal means the school plans to take pupils up to Primary 7. It would mean, in the first instance, that a number of current P2 pupils could continue in Greenwood House rather than having to move school. The school's proposal will help to provide more special school places for children in Belfast. The Chief Executive of the EA, Richard Pengelly, recently called the shortfall of school places for children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) a "crisis". Belfast was identified as one of the areas where there was a particular pressure on school places. Mr Pengelly said that some mainstream schools could be instructed to enrol more SEN pupils. The chair of Greenwood House's governors Gary Forbes said the special school's move would help parents and pupils. "This will mean that we can offer a place to children up to Primary 7, which gives parents a degree of comfort and assurance about their children's education and development," he told BBC News NI. "It'll really help families, and we're also looking forward to expanding to use the old Elmgrove site." "We want to thank officials from the Education Authority for their support," he added. "The Board of Governors also want to pay tribute to our principal, Lorriane Thompson, and wonderful staff for all their hard work and dedication." In a statement to BBC News NI, a spokesperson for the EA said: "As part of ongoing efforts to increase capacity across the school estate, EA has been working closely with Greenwood House to expand its provision from age 3 to age 11 from September 2026, utilising the old Elmgrove site which will be refurbished as part of the plans." "The transition process will start this year and will help the overall position," they continued. As well as Sir Van Morrison, other former pupils of Elmgrove Primary include the late Northern Ireland footballer and manager Billy Bingham and unionist politician David Ervine. Meanwhile, the EA has confirmed plans to create a new special school at the site of the former Orangefield High School in Belfast. BBC News NI understands that could mean a number of existing special schools being relocated to the site of the former high school in east Belfast. The first integrated Irish language primary school in east Belfast, Naíscoil na Seolta, has previously said it is also interested in a long-term move to the Orangefield site.
BBC News
29-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
Van Morrison's former primary to become a special school
Sir Van Morrison's former primary school in east Belfast is set to become a special school school on the Beersbridge Road closed in 2024, with pupils and staff moving to a new building Beersbridge Road site is right beside "the hollow", made famous in Sir Van's song Brown Eyed former Elmgrove school building is now set to house pupils from Greenwood House special school in east Belfast from September 2026. Greenwood House has announced plans to expand its pupil numbers by using Elmgrove as a dual campus alongside its existing site close to the Newtownards Education Authority (EA) has said the school's move "will help the overall position" on school House currently has about 70 pupils aged between three and six, but its expansion proposal means the school plans to take pupils up to Primary would mean, in the first instance, that a number of current P2 pupils could continue in Greenwood House rather than having to move school's proposal will help to provide more special school places for children in Belfast. The Chief Executive of the EA, Richard Pengelly, recently called the shortfall of school places for children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) a "crisis".Belfast was identified as one of the areas where there was a particular pressure on school places. Mr Pengelly said that some mainstream schools could be instructed to enrol more SEN pupils. The chair of Greenwood House's governors Gary Forbes said the special school's move would help parents and pupils."This will mean that we can offer a place to children up to Primary 7, which gives parents a degree of comfort and assurance about their children's education and development," he told BBC News NI."It'll really help families, and we're also looking forward to expanding to use the old Elmgrove site.""We want to thank officials from the Education Authority for their support," he added."The Board of Governors also want to pay tribute to our principal, Lorriane Thompson, and wonderful staff for all their hard work and dedication." In a statement to BBC News NI, a spokesperson for the EA said: "As part of ongoing efforts to increase capacity across the school estate, EA has been working closely with Greenwood House to expand its provision from age 3 to age 11 from September 2026, utilising the old Elmgrove site which will be refurbished as part of the plans.""The transition process will start this year and will help the overall position," they well as Sir Van Morrison, other former pupils of Elmgrove Primary include the late Northern Ireland footballer and manager Billy Bingham and unionist politician David the EA has confirmed plans to create a new special school at the site of the former Orangefield High School in News NI understands that could mean a number of existing special schools being relocated to the site of the former high school in east first integrated Irish language primary school in east Belfast, Naíscoil na Seolta, has previously said it is also interested in a long-term move to the Orangefield site.
Irish Times
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
‘I wanted to do something radical': Wendy Erskine on her debut novel, which deals with class, rape and parenting
Driving down the Cregagh Road in east Belfast, after the Museum of Orange Heritage, the eye is inevitably drawn to the gauntlet of union flags lining the street, which perhaps obscures the shift from middle- to working-class housing. Some things never change, you might think, yet you'd be wrong. It's perfectly safe nowadays to park your southern-reg car on a side street. The author Wendy Erskine lives nearby and has taught English in a local secondary school since 1997 (including to fellow author Lucy Caldwell), and Caffe Nero is an auspicious location. Michael Magee won the inaugural Nero debut fiction prize for Close to Home , his coruscating portrait of post-Troubles but still troubled Belfast. Erskine's equally powerful debut novel, The Benefactors, similarly captures a city no longer overshadowed by political and sectarian violence, allowing light to shine instead on other social ills such as violence against women and class divisions. The title relates to several disparate groups, evidence of the layered nature of the work. Misty, a young working-class woman whose sexual assault by three middle-class teenagers is at the heart of this novel, has an account on an OnlyFans-style website called The Benefactors or Bennyz. Bronagh, whose son is one of the boys guilty of rape, runs a charity dependent on wealthy American do-gooders. She also colludes with the two other mothers in buying Misty's silence, dressing it up as a goodwill gesture. There are also those who do the right thing for no financial reward, such as Boogie, who takes on the responsibility of raising his daughter, Misty, and her half-sister, Gen, when their mother absconds. READ MORE If the lives portrayed are sometimes difficult, the reading experience is anything but, leavened with a dry Belfast wit and benefiting from a sharp authorial eye and ear. 'Humour is so much a dimension of life that not to include it seems like a decision,' says Erskine. 'If you don't find it funny, it's very bleak.' Erskine's gift for authentic and entertaining dialogue is matched with one for deft and memorable characterisation, honed and displayed in her two short story collections, Sweet Home (2018) and Dance Move (2022). [ Wendy Erskine: 'There's a real high that comes from having written a short story' Opens in new window ] Her second collection's epigraph from William Blake – 'Joy and woe are woven fine/ A clothing for the soul divine' – could serve as a recipe for her fiction. She also approvingly quotes her literary hero, Gordon Burn, who imagined his artist friend George Shaw 'painting the back room of the social club in Tile Hill with all the seriousness of Monet painting Rouen Cathedral'. 'There is real brutality but also a lot of fun and joy in life,' she says of her literary sensibility, influenced by Burn's fearless focus on life's sleazy, tawdry underbelly. 'There is also an attention to detail, the specifics of people's worlds. I'm asking the reader to collaborate with me. You have to trust the reader, that they can cope with complex characters, a tolerance for people being contradictory. If you try to smooth it, you lose what makes them realistic. Of course, if they are just a jumble of contradictory elements, that also is not realistic. 'Specificity is not just verisimilitude,' she clarifies. 'If it were just to provide a mimetic facsimile of reality, then what's the point, why not just look at some photographs? It's about creating worlds.' She quotes Zola: ''Art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.' I'm nosy as hell, I'm always noticing, listening, paying attention. I'm really interested in people, in structure.' She is not afraid to move beyond realism. The handover scene is inspired by Sergio Leone's westerns. One of the women even bursts incongruously into song. The Benefactors is about two worlds colliding. 'It's about sexual assault but that's only part of the book because so much is about what it means to be a good parent, it's about class, money, love, charity. And then cut into the novel we have 50 first-person monologues. I didn't want 50 different perspectives on what happened that night. I wanted a really polyphonic, kaleidoscopic, experience of a place. 'These voices are there to refract the central concerns of the novel. It's always struck me how arbitrary it is who you focus on as a writer. One writer might focus on those people sitting over there, somebody else the person serving. Often when I'm reading I'm going: okay, so I'm listening to your conversation but I wonder what that waiter is thinking. It's to give a broad, complex consideration of a particular place.' Each time you write a story you have to re-establish a world, even if it is quite geographically circumscribed. It's quite tiring Erskine's creative approach is to start with ideas for a character, which she has described as like playing with coins in her pocket, wondering what to spend them on. The novel has traditionally been regarded as a bourgeois form, privileging the individual over the collective, which some left-wing authors have sought to challenge by focusing on a group of people working together. So I wonder how much her diverse, multi-voiced approach to storytelling is down to methodology and how much to ideology? 'Although I wasn't conscious of it, I think there is something in what you are saying,' she says, although her initial impetus was more practical. 'I'd written maybe 30 or 40 short stories and I wanted to write a novel. I thought I would like to reside in the same world as my characters for longer than six or seven weeks, for maybe a year. Each time you write a story you have to re-establish a world, even if it is quite geographically circumscribed. It's quite tiring. I know that sounds ridiculous but it's like building a stage set, then striking the set. 'I didn't want to write a novel that could have existed as a short story. I know the form is super flexible but at same time there are limits. You can't deal with five characters' entire existences, you certainly can't put in another 50 people. I knew there would be a complexity of voices and something formally quite radical. I didn't want a wee chamber piece with a super narrow focus. I knew I wanted to do something radical.' She was aware of the risk that readers might switch off, tiring of having to recalibrate to a new perspective in each chapter, but she likes a more challenging reading experience. 'A good novel will teach you how to read it. I'm not a driver – I failed my test seven times – but I know when I get in the car if the driver knows what they're doing.' The sexual assault at the centre of The Benefactors recalls the high-profile 2018 Belfast rape trial , whose defendants were acquitted. 'It would be extremely disingenuous of me to say I'd never heard of the rugby rape trial,' says Erskine, 'but I've lived in this city most of my life and so I'm aware of any number of different trials and experiences that aren't to do with trials, of what happens in people's lives.' She is all too aware that the North has a bad reputation for misogyny and violence against women. 'I can't remember the statistics but this is not a good place. An extremely high number of women were killed by partners in their home. In terms of social attitudes, this place is traditionally behind others, with a lot of internalised misogyny.' She highlights how prejudice is not universal and intersects with class bias, rendering working-class women more vulnerable to abuse. But the sexual assault was not the starting point. The genesis of the novel was two characters, Frankie and Boogie. 'I wanted people from different backgrounds to be brought somehow into close proximity. That became a sexual assault.' In the initial stages, the book consisted of lots of little shards of memories just floating around in her head – 'I have a houseful of empty notebooks' – such as a YouTube video of a guy putting Mentos into a bottle of Coke. 'I liked that guy's attitude to having fun with kids. I wanted to write about someone who is an unlikely but really good parent.' Erskine dislikes didactic storytelling. 'I don't like fiction that has huge designs on me, or where characters are used as vehicles. They have to take precedence. I know it sounds a bit Mystic Meg, but you have to allow characters to push back,' rather like actors taking issue with the script. But there are times when Erskine and her creations are singing from the same hymn sheet, such as when the wonderfully potty-mouthed, born-again Christian Nan tells Misty, her great-granddaughter, that the boys who harmed her 'are not our type of people'. The divide she is reinforcing is not the North's usual tribal Catholic-Protestant one but the class divide. 'I really enjoyed that conversation,' says Erskine. [ In the Kitchen by Wendy Erskine: consider the clutter Opens in new window ] One of the 50 random, anonymous voices that insert themselves between the traditional chapters also feels like Erskine's philosophy shining through. 'Mate, let me tell you, I got to the stage of life where, if it's not about love to some degree, then I don't want to know.' She agrees, adding: 'That's on the No Alibis tote bag'. A debut novel backed with its own bookshop merch. Time is not linear and Erskine is passionate about the ever-present nature of the past and how it influences, even dictates, her characters' thoughts and actions. She scorns the notion of a character having a backstory as some kind of optional extra. 'For what I do, it's just a word that doesn't work. To my mind everything is simultaneous. There is no such thing as past.' Instead we have flashbacks or separate timelines, where we see for example Frankie being groomed as a teenager in care, learning to look after herself but becoming hardened to the extent that, when she in turns becomes a stepmother, the child in her care feels like an orphan. Structuring the novel proved an interesting challenge. 'A much more traditional structure would be to have the sexual assault come in the first third. I wanted the novel to be almost like a bowtie, that well-known literary term. You've got all these people, trust me on this, it all comes together, then it all goes out again.' The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas interested her as a model. 'In The Slap, there are eight different narrative points of view, constructed as a kind of relay, one coming after the other, each advancing the story. At no point do we return to the point of view of an earlier character. Whereas, in The Benefactors there is a rotation. We have Frankie, then Boogie, then Miriam, then Misty, then Bronagh and then we return again to their perspectives at various points. 'I also think just generally it's like The Slap in that a central incident is used to hold together a consideration of a range of preoccupations.' So much of what I understand about how to write, structure, conceptualise relationships, I learned from Chekhov She originally planned for the 50 anonymous voices to bunch in the middle 'like a choric interlude' but that didn't work so instead they are scattered throughout. Miriam, another of the mothers, is grieving her late husband, complicated by the knowledge a young woman was with him in the fatal car crash. The novel she is reading is 'full of young women's non-problems'. 'Miriam had expected a kind of cool and expansive perspicacity, but this is juvenile solipsism.' What might seem a sassy diss on Erskine's part is in fact in character for Miriam, who has a grudge against young women generally. By contrast, when Bronagh mocks Donal for a poetic turn of phrase, Erskine owns it. 'What some people think of as fine writing is very misguided. It's like the Dolly Parton thing: It takes a lot of work to look this cheap. My dialogue is edited over and over to get it just right.' This reminds me of Erskine's appreciation of the austere beauty of a whitewashed church wall in contrast to the Baroque's excess. 'I used to get migraines all the time, and when I came round I felt euphoric, looking at a white wall my husband was painting and Lonely Sad Eyes by Them was playing,' she says. 'I honestly regard that as one of the high points of my life, the simplicity of it.' Kathryn Ferguson has directed a short film scripted by Stacy Gregg and starring Aidan Gillen based on Erskine's short story Notalgie, written for The Irish Times. She has written an essay on Pasolini, another on fashion, a film script, several stories and 20,000 words of a new novel, about a Vanity Fair Becky Sharp-style grifter in mid-Ulster in the late 70s.' [ Nostalgie, a short story by Wendy Erskine Opens in new window ] Erskine wrote an unpublished novel in her 20s but was almost 50 when her short story Locksmiths won her a place on a Stinging Fly writing course in Dublin taught by Sean O'Reilly. 'But so much of what I understand about how to write, structure, conceptualise relationships, I learned from Chekhov.' [ Locksmiths, a short story by Wendy Erskine Opens in new window ] Contemporaries she admires include Adrian Duncan, Will Ashon, Svetlana Alexievich, fellow teacher-writers Elaine Feeney and Kevin Curran, 'people who just do their own thing'. She had studied in Glasgow, then taught in England, but personal circumstances brought her back to Belfast. Her goal had always been to return to Glasgow 'but as it turned out I love living here, it's beautiful, compact, there's a real energy here, in terms of writing, the arts, it's such an interesting place. The deep structures are obviously problematic.' What would make it better? 'On this particular road, a bar!' The Benefactors is published by Sceptre on June 19th
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Cllr Tracy Kelly to become DUP's first female Belfast lord mayor
South Belfast councillor Tracy Kelly is set to become the city's first female lord mayor from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). She is expected to be voted into the top position in Belfast at a council meeting on Monday night. It will make her the second female unionist to become the city's lord mayor. The late Grace Bannister held the position in 1981, and there is a footbridge in east Belfast named in her honour. The next deputy lord mayor is set to be west Belfast councillor Paul Doherty of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). Kelly, 47, is from the Donegall Road area of south Belfast and used to work in community development, which sparked her interest in politics. She is currently office manager at the DUP constituency office of MLA Edwin Poots, who is the speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly. She previously worked for MLA Christopher Stalford, who died suddenly three years ago, aged 39. He had encouraged her to become involved in politics, and she was first elected to the council in 2019. "He asked me to run in that election," she told BBC News NI. "Him and constituents pressurised me into running in the 2019 election. I never thought I would ever sit in city council - never mind be lord mayor." The DUP has held the position of lord mayor in Belfast nine times, and among those to wear the chain of office were Nigel Dodds, Sammy Wilson and current party leader Gavin Robinson. Asked about being the first female from the party in the role, Kelly said: "I feel very privileged to be the first female. Women are now taking more and more leadership roles." She pointed out that the DUP has already had a female leader, Arlene Foster, who became first minister, and Emma Little-Pengelly is the current deputy first minister. Looking ahead to her year in office, she said: "My aim as lord mayor is to ensure that nobody is left behind. "Over the years Belfast has evolved and changed dramatically, since the Troubles especially. "But there's communities out there that are disengaged from the city centre, they don't feel part of this change. "And there's also young people who are disengaged from education, employment and training. I want to reach out to them." Away from politics, Kelly is a football fan and supports Linfield and Liverpool. The outgoing lord mayor is Micky Murray of the Alliance Party, who described himself as the first "openly gay" first citizen in Belfast.
