City of Culture, City of Peace 2013

It’s great news for Derry and a great challenge to peace-building: how do you do culture in a divided city?

Culture is inextricably linked to values and history. A people’s values can only be understood and explained in their narrative about themselves. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz described culture as simply “the ensemble of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves”. In divided societies the stories not only differ from each other, they come into conflict with each other.

In ethnic conflict one person’s culture, sometimes but not always in caricature, is another person’s nightmare. Orange culture is seen by the other as a bullying, undemocratic supremacist ideology which is determined to maintain its hegemonic position in Northern Ireland. Republican culture is seen by the other as a threatening, undemocratic ideology determined to ride roughshod over others and force them into a state they want no part of. It works at the high end too. Field Day Theatre Company is being commissioned as part of the City of Culture programme to reflect on the “cultural state we’re in”. It’s not so long ago since unionist academics (coincidentally from Belfast) were denouncing Field Day as “green boosterism”.

UNO promotes a “culture of peace”. This means that peace is much more than the absence of war. Peace is a set of values, attitudes and modes of behaviour promoting the peaceful settlement of conflict and the quest for mutual understanding. In fact, peace is actually a way to live together. A culture of peace is a way of being, doing and living in society that can be taught, developed, and best of all, improved upon.

Placing a culture of peace at the centre of its mission statement, at the heart of its ethos and in its very title (“City of Culture, City of Peace”) will enable all the people of the city to achieve consensus about the overriding goals and the programme of activities. Consensus does not mean the absence of conflict or a bland homogeneity of expression drifting downwards to the lowest common denominator. Consensus is based on the quest for mutual understanding. This quest begins with the frank recognition of differences and the determination to use these differences to challenge us all out of our comfort zone and into a creative clash with the other. Mutual understanding fosters values vital for the maintenance of peace like non-violence, respect for others, tolerance of behaviour and the supremacy of human rights.

We can make these values the cornerstone of the City of Culture, City of Peace.

In the years up to and after 2013 we can construct a new narrative, tell new stories and sow the seeds of a new culture.