Joint fayre for west Belfast communities
Two west Belfast communities at the heart of Northern Ireland’s sectarian divide are holding their first joint Christmas fayre.
Saturday’s event is to take place on the Stewartstown Road interface. A car boot sale, craft and food market, games, Santa’s Grotto and carol singing are planned.
Despite this the head of the Community Relations Council has warned that Northern Ireland is not moving on fully from its bitter past.
Chief executive Duncan Morrow highlighted political differences over creating a shared future and warned there were tensions within victims’ groups.
Lisa McElherron, a manager at the Suffolk and Lenadoon Interface Group (SLIG), said: “This is a great opportunity for communities from all traditions to come together to celebrate the festive season and it promises to be a really good afternoon. We’re very proud of the fact that this is the first Christmas fayre to be held on an interface.”
Mr Morrow told an OFMDFM committee meeting at Stormont that fear was creating no-go areas in some towns for young people and called for that to be confronted.
“One of the great obstacles to the future is how we deal with the past and that continues to be reality,” he said.
“We believe that there should be a point of transformation about building the future rather than simply managing the difficulties of the past and that that balance isn’t fully moved towards transformation.”
He said fear and controls on where they could go was a real issue for young people.
“In many different towns we confront that and how to deal with that is an ongoing reality that hasn’t yet gone away,” he added.
