Inishowen Community Radio, the Greenbank Thursday Club and the Roe Valley 55 + Activity Club
16 November 2010
Local stories go digital and take to the airwaves
- Silver surfing across the Foyle
Groups representing Inishowen Community Radio, the Greenbank Thursday Club and the Roe Valley 55 + Activity Club, came together on 15th November 2010 in Quigley’s Point, Co. Donegal for a celebratory event to broadcast and mark the culmination of an innovative project known as ‘Silver Surfing Across the Foyle’.
The ‘Silver Surfing Across the Foyle’ project brought participants together on a cross community/border basis to capture and broadcast the stories of how the ‘troubles’ impacted upon their lives. The project also provided a peace-building dimension by supporting the participants in exploring and coming to terms with, in a safe space, the community relations issues/incidents that have fractured relations and hence divided communities across the Inishowen peninsula in the past.
Acting as a lead partner and facilitator in this process, Inishowen Community Radio, the most northerly community station in Ireland, brought together members from the Greenbank Thursday Club in Quigley’s Point, Donegal and the Roe Valley 55+ Activity Club from Ballykelly, Co. Derry/Londonderry, who would never meet under ordinary circumstances. Through a facilitated process over a series of workshops, participants addressed community relations issues, learnt new IT skills and then put these skills into practice to produce, record and share their stories with the wider community.
The final stories and reflections were captured on CD and aired on Inishowen Community Radio’s talk show, ‘Talktime’ as part of a live outside broadcast which took place during the actual launch event, held in Greenbank Hall, Quigley’s Point.
