BRAY SOAKS UP THE SUN!

Aoife and Katie O’Rourke enjoying the sunshine at Bray seafront on Sunday.

The Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation will host a special event with academics, practitioners and artists to explore the experiences and uncertain future of border-crossing.

‘Borders and Borderlands: Imaginings, Crossings, Encounters’ will take place at the centre on Saturday, June 24. For 43 years, the Glencree Centre for Peace and REconciiliation has supported the peaceful resolution of the conflict in and about Northern Ireland and the creation of an inclusive society on the island of Ireland.

Glencree has worked across the borders of community, language, identity, and politics that can both unite and divide. This year, Glencree will be exploring the experiences of border-crossing and the possibility of a new politics of encounter and discovery in these uncertain times. This one-day private event will include a diverse range of speakers who will explore perceptions and experiences.

There will be focus on the implications and responses to possible changes to the Irish border in the post-Brexit context as well as how borders are experienced by migrants fleeing conflict across Europe and seeking better lives.

Setting a context for the day will be Professor Catherine Nash, a political and cultural geographer who has written extensively on the subject of the Irish border and border crossings. Playwright Frank Mc Guinness will address the theme of border crossing between Donegal and Derry in relation to his own life and through his play ‘ The Factory Girls’, a play about women in factory work in Derry.

Author and map maker Garret Carr, whose book ‘ The Rule of the Land’ chronicles his walk along the Border between the south and the north of Ireland, will discuss his unique experience and the implications of a Border. Kapka Kassabova journeyed through people whose lives have been and continue to be shaped by the convergence of the Bulgarian, Greek and Turkish borders. Her new book ‘Border: A journey to the Edge of Europe’, is a both travelogue and a meditation on the borderlines that exist between countries, between cultures, people, and within each of us.

To book or for more information, go to glencree.ie.