About Us

The Northern Ireland Troubles Archive is a web-based resource about the ways in which the Arts reflected the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The Arts Council has undertaken to create a resource that gathers information about relevant art forms, practitioners and their work in one online web-based resource. The goal is to create an inclusive resource that reflects the relevant work of all parts of the arts community in Northern Ireland during the years of the conflict. In this way, we can acknowledge the unique political context within which the arts have struggled and flourished in the recent history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland; a journey from the Civil Rights marches of the late 1960s to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.


The Troubles Archive covers a broad range of arts activity across a variety of art forms including visual art, literature, drama, film, radio and television, music, prison art and architecture. The archive contains textual information as well as additional multimedia, such as images and film. The Arts Council also commissioned a series of essays as a way of introducing the various art forms which are included as PDF files in the Archive.


It is planned that the archive will also contain recorded interviews with artists, writers and other practitioners, speaking about their lives and work in the context of the Northern Irish Troubles and will seek to serve a wide community of researchers, students, academics, visitors to Northern Ireland and survivors of the conflict.


Work on the archive has been undertaken over a number of years, with information and essays drawn from a wide range of sources.