Archive News
Community groups use unique Film Centre scheme to tell their stories
Date Published: {J}
It’s a new organisation, but when members of Tiernascragh Heritage Project in south-east Galway were invited by Galway Film Centre to make a short documentary recording their work, they leaped at the opportunity.
The film will be screened in Galway Town Hall this Sunday along with documentaries from four other community groups around the city and county as part of the Film Centre’s Project ID scheme, now in its 10th year.
Earlier this year, the Tiernascragh Heritage Group discovered a series of essays written in 1937 by nine children from the local national school as part of an Irish Folklore Commission project in the new Irish State.
The 74-year-old essays consisted of legends, superstitions, pastimes, prayers, curses and other oral history which the children had collected from their grandparents and other parishioners, giving an extraordinary glimpse into ordinary people’s lives as far back as the 1800s.
The 1937 project was carried out under the supervision of teacher Éamon Quigley and the resulting essays are now in the Department of Folklore in UCD, explains Tiernascragh Heritage Project Chairman, Pat Madden. Members were granted access to the original documents and were thrilled with what these revealed about the history of this place, located between Portumna and Eyrecourt.
Around the same time, they saw an ad seeking applicants for Galway Film Centre ID Projects, which helps community groups to tell their own stories while learning how to make films in the process.
They applied to make a film and the result is a documentary shot over several days, in which local children – several of them related to the original pupils – read the essays.
“There are a number of aspects to it,” says Pat. “It helps us to tell the story and it remembers the local people who wrote the essays.”
A classroom from the 1930s was recreated in the Lady Gregory Museum in Kiltartan, thanks to support from local historian Sr de Lourdes Fahy, while much of the other footage was shot in Tiernascragh.
“Where possible we tried to get a child related to the original essay-writer to read that essay,” says Pat. “The process showed those kids what life was like for their grandparents and older relations.”
When filming began, five of the original nine participants were alive. One person has since died and the remaining four are in their 80s.
People aged from five to 90 were involved in making the film, and in addition to learning about local history, they also learned technical skills, says Pat.
“Galway Film Centre taught us how to use the camera, to control the light and sound and gave us the skills to do that. And the editor was brilliant.
This ID Projects scheme, which began in 2000, allows communities throughout Galway to tell their stories via short films, which they make themselves, with full support from trained staff at Galway Film Centre, explains Nuala Broderick who co-ordinates the scheme.
The ID Projects was the brainchild of Galway Film Centre which sought funding from the Arts Council for the scheme ten years ago because film equipment – once prohibitively expensive – had become more affordable. Galway City and County VEC also came on board and other organisations may give funding for specific projects.
“Galway is the only place I know of that is doing this,” says Nuala, adding that the Centre works with communities in Mayo and Clare on similar schemes, but without similar funding.
The Centre advertises for participants each year, and interested groups apply and go through an interview process.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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