- For one generation of Americans, civil and sectarian violence in Northern Ireland was brought into our homes through regular reporting on the nightly news.

For a younger generation, it was brought home in the powerful lyrics of the band known as U2.

Today's guests are creators of street art and murals that remember that era in Northern Ireland's history.

They are Tom Kelly and Kevin Hasson of the Bogside Artists, this week on Story in the Public Square.

(bright upbeat theme music) Hello, and welcome to Story in the Public Square, where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G Wayne Miller with the Providence Journal.

This week, we're joined by Tom Kelly and Kevin Hasson, two of the three artists in Derry, Northern Ireland who are known to the world as The Bogside Artists.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us.

- Yeah, thanks for having us.

- Thanks for having us.

Thank you.

- So we were drawn to your work when we actually saw you on another television show, and we wanted to learn more about your work and the life that you depict in Northern Ireland.

So tell us first about The Bogside Artists.

- Well, the Bogside Artists are three artists that were born and lived in the Bogside throughout our entire lives, and we've been practicing artists in the Bogside.

But the Bogside obviously is synonymous with the Northern Irish conflict over the last 35 years.

And as three independent artists doing our own thing, we thought it would be important for us to record our experiences, not just ours personally, but the entire community's experience of living through everything from gun battles to bomb explosions, the assassinations to the killing of children, riots, plastic bullets, tear gas, and all of that on a constant basis.

As three artists to actually come together and create a narrative to actually tell the story and to create what has been known as a human document, art in the heart of conflict, and basically tell that story in a representational way, because we were not trying to intellectualize very sensitive events, or we were not trying to bamboozle anyone with heavy conceptual images, but we were simply recording our experience as we all experienced it, and hopefully at the end of the day in creating these 12 large scale murals now known as The People's Gallery, that it would be a cathartic experience, not just for us, but for the entire community.

- Yeah, this is a question that I think we could spend the multiple episodes on, but we're talking about The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Kevin, for an audience that maybe only has a passing knowledge of what The Troubles were, can you encapsulate that, in, you know, in a few minutes here?

- Sure, I'll do my best.

Ireland was partitioned in 1922 and the Northern Ireland state was set up then, but the overwhelming majority of the people in the North of Ireland were from a Protestant background and they preferred to be known as British, and be part of the UK.

There was a minority of Catholic people who consider themselves Irish nationalists and didn't want to be part of the new Northern Ireland state.

Anyhow, since 1922, up until right about the late sixties, the Catholic community was the minority there, and the system that was in place by what they called Unionists, Unionism, was discriminating against the minority in like the voting system, it was gerrymandering, and jobs and various things.

So more or less the minority was treated as second class citizens for a very long time.

And til the late 60s when young people here, particularly students at Queens University in Belfast and so on, we're very much influenced by what was happening in the United States with the civil rights movement there with Martin Luther King and so on.

And that had a lot of influence in people here and gave them the courage for the people here to go on to the streets in the North of Ireland and demand basic human rights and equality, but because of the nature of the state and its sectarian nature, that the police force, even though the first civil rights demonstration in Northern Ireland was held in our city, here at Derry where we are, and it was held on the 5th of October, 1968.

It was peaceful non-violent, but unfortunately the people there were met with serious violence and brutality by the police force.

And then one thing kinda led to another, there was a lot of tension building for many years.

And then there was a big event shortly after the first civil rights march.

It's called the 12th of August here, and it's when the Protestant Unionist people, it's when they commemorate a massive event, very dear to them and their history.

It's called The Siege of Derry, which happened in 1689.

And it's a glorious moment for them, and they commemorate that every year.

So in the late sixties, because of the high tensions among the Catholic community, people like John Hume and others, people of wisdom, were calling on the people to postpone their annual commemoration on the 12th of August, 1969, because the tensions were so high within the Catholic community in the Bogside, but it wasn't to be.

The commemoration went ahead as usual, where tens of thousands of Protestant people come from Scotland and England and other parts to take part in it, and it immediately turned violent.

And what happened was that the police force pushed the people back towards the Bogside with the intentions of invading the Bogside, but the people there defended the area, they built barricades, they made petrol bombs, it was a (indistinct) uprising basically, and in they on the eyes of the Catholic community, they were defending their community against the attack by the police force, and it lasted for three days and three nights.

On the second day of of the battle of the Bogside, Belfast had also erupted and things were now rapidly heading towards all out civil war.

And that's when the British troops arrived on the streets to restore some kinda order.

And that was short-lived also, that only happened months before things took a turn again, and basically from a Catholic Nationalist point of view, the British army was now doing similar things as the police force was doing before that.

And people become very disenchanted with the British soldiers themselves, and then just the chain of events.

It wasn't long before the emergence of the IRA.

I hope that was quick.

- So Tom, we wanna get into these murals.

I think we should note that the third Bogside artist was your brother William who died I think about five years ago.

Is that correct?

- Yeah, that's just around about this time, exactly five years ago.

Yeah, Will was, he was a good a writer as he was an artist.

He was very passionate about his work and was 10 years older than myself and Kevin, and he sorta took the lead.

He did his degree in art and Trinity, Dublin, and was, it was a big loss to the group.

But myself and Kevin decided that we would continue on, not just with the murals, which have enjoyed a great deal of acclaim throughout the world, But we also have exhibitions, one in Canada at the moment, and we have an exhibition of our work in Georgia University.

And so on occasion, that exhibition gets hired by all our universities.

So over the last 15 years, we've been over and back and over and back to United States quite a lot, to mostly academic circles, and we've enjoyed a great deal of interest, but what we're really excited about at the minute is that we have an exhibition of our work, which depicts the conflict here and our experience of that conflict, seen through an artist eye, but that exhibition is in England and is touring all over England at the minute.

So we've had quite a an interesting response, but that that's where the... that's where our work should be.

It's in a way, not just taking our story over to England, but it's taking... softening up their story back to themselves, and confronting them with their own participation in this conflict that we've all endured for the last 35 years.

- So Kevin let's get into the petrol bomber.

Can you first describe it?

It's a haunting image, but give us a verbal description and then talk about, you can both talk about how you came to paint that and when you painted that.

- Yeah, okay.

as I just briefly mentioned about an event called The Battle of the Bogside in 1969, which led to the introduction of British troops onto the streets, the mural is actually a child, he's 13 years old, he's wearing a second world war gas mask and holding a petrol bomb.

Also depicted behind him is a high-rise, we call them flats here.

It's a 10 story high rise, and that is also very symbolic of the event in 1969, because young people in the Bogside community were able to get on to the roof of the 10 story high rise, and from there, basically dominate the battle and keep the police at bay.

So in the mural, the main focal point is the child with the gas mask and holding a petrol bomb and with a high rise behind.

The importance of the mural is because some people when they look at it, immediately imagine that it's an adult or someone in their late teens, but the reason it's there from our point of view, is because it's an actual child and we're just trying to convey the whole tragedy of it all, that these things shouldn't have happened, you know?

Things should have been resolved, issues should have been resolved, and it shouldn't have come to a stage where a 13 year old child is standing on the street, with a gas mask and a petrol bomb in his hand.

We painted it in 1994, which was the 25th anniversary of that event.

Tom and myself in 1969 would have been 11 years old at that time, and even as children, that whole world was right around us.

We were right in the thick of it as children.

- We were trying to get it into the consciousness of the people, that we actually went through this, we experienced this, but let's begin to see it as history.

I mean, most of the murals that we had painted were painted before the ceasefire or the truce or the Good Friday agreement.

So there were still bullets whining up the street and there were still petrol bombs being thrown, and there were still children dying on the streets on Northern Ireland while we were painting our murals.

So I know Ireland, especially the North of Ireland is known for it's murals, but this is something totally unique.

This is not a knee jerk reaction to some event, but this is a human document.

It's a narrative that's telling a story, and it's telling a story that's not saying to all our communities or all our artists even, that "Here's our story and it blows yours out of the water," but it's saying, "Here's our story, where is yours?"

Without the balaclavas and the AK 47s, and the (indistinct) insignias.

This is art that is painted with passion, because it's lived.

It's something that we came through, it's something that we experienced, and it's something that we have something to say, and what we're saying is basically, this is what people do to other people and what they do in return.

And that there's a way of actually looking at it, seeing it, understanding it, but only with the view to moving away from it.

I think it was a Bishop Desmond Tutu who actually said "Conflict's like an open wound, and unless you have the courage to look at it, examine it and clean it out, only then will it really heal.

And if it's not cleaned out it's doomed to reopen."

So this conflict in Ireland was always reopening and reopening.

And this was our way, the three artists, the Bogside artists, of actually confronting our own experience and history, painting it on the wall as big and as bold as we can make it, and by way of examining it and moving on to the last mural, which is the peace mural, which is full of color, full of light, and it speaks about the hopes and dreams and aspirations of this generation for the future.

- Can you talk, Kevin, about Bloody Sunday Commemoration?

You know, first describe it.

Again it's an incredibly powerful mural, but describe it and who is in it and its meaning.

- Sure.

Bloody Sunday, as you could well imagine, out of many events that has happened here over the years, to also in particular Tom and myself and indeed the entire community here at Derry, it is probably the thing dearest to our hearts.

And it's probably been also the most traumatic event to happen in our community.

The image that we have depicted in the mural become a well-known TV footage of the time.

The main kid in the mural being carried, his name was Jack Dottie.

He was 17 years old and he was shot in the back as he run from the British paratroop soldiers.

Actually the Bishop, he was a priest at the time, Father Daly.

He was a priest during Bloody Sunday.

He later become the Bishop of the city.

When Jack Dottie and like many others were running from the British soldiers, Jack Dottie was actually running alongside Father Daly at the time.

And I'm just repeating the story by Father Daly.

He said while he was running, he looked at Jack Dottie and Jack Dottie looked at him and began to laugh, because he thought it was funny seeing a priest running from the soldiers, and just then as he laughed, he was hit in the back and killed.

And Father Daly, as you may have seen the famous images of him kneeling over the dying Jack Dottie and so on, but the most famous image and footage is when a group of men, including Father Daly waving a white handkerchief, is trying to get the dying boy out of the shooting zone to nearby ambulances in the city center.

Also in the mural is in the background, there is a truck that people would have been standing on, the truck would have led the demonstration, that has a huge banner on it, and it says The Civil Rights Association.

To the left of the mural is a British soldier, not just any British soldier, it's distinctively a British paratroop soldier, who do stand out from the other soldiers of the British army, because they have a distinctive style of camouflage uniform, and a maroon beret.

So the actual soldier on the mural is a para soldier and under his feet is a blood splattered, civil rights banner.

So we depicted him deliberately standing on the bloodstained civil rights banner.

We also deliberately exaggerated him.

We exaggerated his big boots, we exaggerated his big gun and so on.

And there actually was a real bloodstained civil rights banner, which was laid over all of the bodies on the street.

When we were painting the mural in 1996, we we're preparing the wall, we noticed that there were many bullet holes on the wall before we painted the mural.

I can't say a 100% sure, but most likely some of those bullet holes were actually from Bloody Sunday.

- Tom, you were, I think Kevin earlier mentioned Martin Luther King.

We're taping the same week as we celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday here in the United States.

His life and his inspiration, I know is important to the people of Northern Ireland.

I wonder if you could talk about that because he both inspires and actually appears in one of the murals.

- Yeah, Martin Luther King non-violent approach to an involvement in civil rights movement in United States, was a big inspiration for John Hume, who was the leader of a more moderate political party called the SDLP, the Social and Labor party.

John Hume for us is the real deal, let's just say.

I mean he was beaten by the British army, he was hosed down and beaten by the police force, and he was actually even petrol bombed in his own home by nationalist Republicans in our own city, because he felt that he wasn't being condemning enough or hard enough on the British for things like Bloody Sunday and so on.

But he was a man of peace, and we paid homage to him by painting a portrait alongside his big inspirations.

So we have a portrait of John Hume, we have Martin Luther King Jr, we have Nelson Mandela and we have Mother Teresa there as well.

And there's a bridge between them.

It's a simple symbol, so to speak, as bridge builders.

They're all Nobel laureates, but for us of all the people that came out of the Bogside and became noticeable because of the political climate here, John Hume has head and shoulders above everyone else in our opinion, and in the community's opinion as well.

So it was important to make reference to John Hume.

It's not about, you know, singling anyone out in particular, but he represented, at that time, the majority of people in the city, both Protestant and Catholic, who were looking for politics and dialogue and democracy to work, as opposed to armed struggle and armed conflict, and as opposed to injustice and oppression by the British state as well.

So he was a very clever man and he was a good friend of ours as well, The Bogside artists.

And were not supported or funded by the arts council of Northern Ireland, or indeed the tourist board, even though the murals have become a major tourist attraction.

We never set out to actually do that, but nonetheless, John would regularly visit our gallery, and he would spend time chatting with us and even wrote a foreword for our publication called The People's Gallery.

So he was a good friend, and worthy of having his portrait painted in the heart of the Bogside, where he was also born and raised.

- We've got literally about 30 seconds left here.

I wonder if Kevin, you could say just a little bit, we're about 24 years now after the Good Friday agreement.

What's life like in Northern Ireland today?

- Well, that's a good question.

I suppose most people here today would like it to be a lot better and saying that, things are way better than what we had before.

The North at the time before the Good Friday agreement was the most militarized zone in the whole of Europe, all that military paraphernalia and war paraphernalia is all gone now.

There has been great developments.

I'm gonna be begrudging here, mainly going to Belfast not Derry.

(chuckles lightly) But economically things have improved, but the most important thing, that it has improved for the younger generations.

As I say it could be a lot better, things are not perfect, politics is politics, but it's certainly a lot better now than it was in our time when we were young.

We have our own children today, Tom, myself, and we were just glad that, that they, you know, even though things, as I keep stressing here are not perfect, but at least they would have a better chance and opportunities I suppose, than we ever had in our life.

- Well, Tom Kelly, Kevin Hasson, we could talk to you forever, but that is all the time we have this week.

They are the Bogside Artists, thank you so much for being with us.

That's all the time we have this week, but if you wanna know more about Story in the Public Square, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, or visit pellcenter.org.

For Wayne, I'm Jim, asking you to join us again next time, for more Story in the Public Square.

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