John Hewitt International Summer School

23 - 28 July

Launch in the John Hewitt Bar

Dr Cahal Dallat, Director of the John Hewitt International Summer School welcoming Roisín McDonough to the launch.

Roisín McDonough speeech at the launch of The Whole Mosaic: individuals and their communities, the 2001 John Hewitt International Summer School:

"John Hewitt’s contribution to the cultural life of Ireland has been well-documented. His life’s work in poetry and prose was aimed at finding ways in which the various communities in the north of Ireland could co-exist, interact and exchange with respect and dignity. But he was also keen that respect should include the recognition and celebration of difference, not just its toleration.

Working in the arts, it is hard not to be struck by the values Hewitt laid out in his poetry. The importance of his work lies in the fact it is directed towards the future, not the past. That it salutes the young and the important liberation of education. That it marks out the necessity of concerted action, discussion and debate and measured consultation. And, finally and primarily, that it acknowledges and depends upon the power of the creative arts to transform communities and the lives within them. The ability of communities, people, to produce, absorb and transform art itself.

This is the meaning of that verse in the poem Because I paced My Thought

I should have made it plain that I stake my future

on birds flying in and out of the schoolroom window,

on the council of sunburnt comrades in the sun,

and the picture carried with singing into the temple.

These are important values and ones which are apparent in the ethos of this School, founded in honour of the poet himself.

The idea of The Whole Mosaic is at the heart of the arts in Northern Ireland. A culture is constructed from all its elements and none can be discarded with ease, or without wounding the civic and social structure that makes civilised life possible. I am pleased to note that the art, language and lives of Travellers are to be marked this year for the first time at the School and that the ethnic communities which have added so much to the interest and value of our island are also to be represented, in a way which I am sure would have delighted the poet.

These are important times in Northern Ireland, and the arts are extending themselves to embrace a whole range of practice and activity which is geared to instal the creative life at the very centre of our cultural and social environment. There is a real need for joined up thinking between culture, heritage, the arts and the tough concerns of the wider society in which these elements exist.

The Summer School, as it extends its reach into the communities which may not previously have had access to the power of the arts or the simple joy of making, has an important contribution to make to that process of opening up, of revelation and discovery. I wish it well.