Near this Place: The Liverpool Irish Famine Trail in Visual Art
摘要
During the Irish Famine (1845–1852), it is estimated that as many as 1 million people died, and another 1.5 million emigrated, chiefly to Britain, North America, and Australia. Despite this enormous population shift and the consequent legacies within the Irish diaspora, relatively few official commemorative monuments were erected throughout the twentieth century to mark the cataclysmic event and create sites of collective memory for Irish communities worldwide. Additionally, the majority of information has been transmitted through oral traditions and storytelling among survivors. However, in 1997, the sesquicentennial of Black ‘47—the worst year of the Famine—provided an opportunity for diaspora communities across the world to find new ways of coming to terms with what had been lost. Liverpool has been a center for Irish migration for centuries, either as a terminus in itself or as a nexus between other destinations. During the Famine, hundreds of thousands of Irish migrants arrived in the city; many of those stricken with hunger and disease made it no further. Mass grave sites were designated across Liverpool to deal with the Famine dead; for decades, those sites were left unmarked and unacknowledged as locations were redeveloped and the Famine receded from living memory. They form an essential part of Irish history and the country's heritage. But in 1997, the constitution of Liverpool’s Great Hunger Commemoration Committee led to the creation of the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail. Marked by a series of inconspicuous plaques at important sites, the trail signalled a first attempt to re-present this aspect of the city’s history to its residents and visitors. Over the next 25 years, the profile of the trail fell out of public view, until in 2022, National Lottery Heritage Funding was awarded for its regeneration. This chapter considers the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail in the context of memory, memorial, and heritage studies, drawing on the scholarship of Emily Mark-Fitzgerald, Chris Morash, and Niamh-Ann Kelly. It reflects on the history of the trail’s design and plans for its regeneration through interviews with the Irish community, local historians, and creative practitioners involved in the project. Finally, the chapter evaluates the work of the author’s own production company, Sidelong Glance, to raise awareness through the film ‘2600’ of one mass grave site marked along the trail as a way of providing meaningful interpretation of such intangible heritage.