A Belfast charity is looking at the legacy of The Troubles and peace walls on the post-conflict generation in a new documentary 'No More Bricks in the Wall'.
Belfast Won't Always Be This Way, named after a quote by Lyra McKee, was started in 2021 by Sarah Kay and Brendan Harkin as a photography project to highlight the need for change in the city.
The group then began reaching out to activists and political figureheads as passionate about their cause as they were to show point young people in the direction of those actively trying to incite change around the country.
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Speaking to Belfast Live, co-founder and human rights lawyer Sarah said that her own experiences of growing up near the peace walls, leaving to see the world and then returning in 2020 acted as an eye-opener to the impact of segregation on the younger population of Northern Ireland - particularly in Belfast.
Sarah said: "We started in July 2021, with our photographer and co-founder, Brendan Harkin. We just set out to spend a couple of days on our bikes around the city and I had gotten hold of this poster that reads “it won’t always be like this”, after Lyra McKee’s article.
"The idea was to take photos of us with this poster to highlight what needed to change in the city - it was about paramilitary murals, historical buildings left to decay, neighbourhoods that should be preserved (like Sailortown) and the housing crisis.
"We quickly realised that it is one thing to point out at what doesn’t work, but it’s useless if we don’t do anything about this so we are working on the rest of Lyra’s words - “it will get better” - and interviewed activists about their work.
"The point was to signpost people, especially young people who want to start being involved in changing their world, to those who are working on this. We all started somewhere, and we are all motivated by something and so we work on interviewing people who we believe represent everything that is positive, inclusive, and awe-inspiring about this city and Northern Ireland as a whole."
Their latest project, No More Bricks in the Wall, is their first feature-length film which will tackle the meaning of separation walls for the ceasefire generation and the generation following.
"I grew up by a separation wall on the Springfield Road and it was something that affected me a lot but I did not really realise how surreal it is to grow up around actual separation walls until I moved away.
"This never left me, and when I moved back, I saw how much Belfast had changed - and how much hadn’t. And the walls were still standing. Some of them had been modified, and it represents massive change but they are still there.
"So we wanted to show the impact of segregation and division in our town, especially for this generation. This is not a movie about the conflict, it’s about our generation, our younger siblings’ generation, what we have inherited and what we want to see change for the better," she explained.
The charity was awarded a Feature Development Grant by Northern Ireland Screen who supported the idea of working with a young crew.
Sarah continued: "This generation needs a space and a voice - Tolu Ogunware is our director and the creative director of Belfast Won’t Always Be Like This, and his first documentary, “black, northern Irish and proud” was already bought by the BBC and aired in September 2022.
"He works in perfect tandem with our director of photography, Peter Johnston, who has already received two awards and is impossibly talented. The shots he is giving us blow my mind.
"Ted Godson-Treacy, our camera operator, has a keen and fantastic eye for detail and it’s also great to have someone who’s not from Belfast to see what we may not notice, and he’s delivered on all fronts.
"Our camera assistant, Sarah McDonald, has stepped up during interviews with politicians and activists as well. It feels like we are already a well-oiled machine."
In the future, Belfast Won't Always be like this hope to continue meeting more people to highlight, signpost, broadcast, and collaborate with.
"We have recently been registered with the charity commission, which allows us to take on larger projects and receive grants as an organization. We are not doing this for profit, we are all filming and shooting on our free time," she said.
"We are honestly having a lot of fun and we are discovering so much about a place we thought we were tired of, and this is a great feeling. When people tell us that “it won’t always be like this” means something to them, and they share that with us, on Instagram, by email, or even when they see us in the street, it means a lot."
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