Representing movements in several directions (immigration, emigration, return migration) and stages (leaving, journeying, arriving), the film weaves together the stories of migrants from the distant past up until recent times narrated in their own voices, through their correspondence, and in the multi-generational memories passed to their descendants.
Filmed on location at the Ulster American Folk Park – an outdoor migration museum in County Tyrone – in the enclosed setting of a dimly-lit nineteenth-century ‘old world’ mass house, the film challenges the illusory fixedness of its backdrop with an exploration of lives moving through space and time, transcending standard chronologies and uncovering universal experience beyond the Irish context.
Whether you’re Irish born, Irish bred or Irish in spirit, get involved & celebrate a year of Irish connections – The Gathering Ireland 2013!
Festivals and events
The Gathering will bring together hundreds of festivals and events throughout Ireland during 2013. They will celebrate the best in Irish music, art, literature, dance, culture, heritage, sport, film and food.
Fantastic New Year’s Eve Festivals will bookend the year, ensuring that 2013 both starts and ends with a bang! In between, take your pick from events such as St Patrick’s Festival, the Galway Arts Festival, the Wexford Opera Festival and Temple Bar TradFest, to name but a few. These will be familiar to many people but in 2013 they will all offer exciting new elements, making them bigger and better than ever for those visiting for The Gathering.
Great Gathering ideas
There are so many ways to get involved in The Gathering Ireland 2013. From family reunions to community festivals and twin towns to alumni gatherings, everyone is encouraged to work together to organise and host get-togethers. Reach out to your networks and connections overseas and invite them to come and visit in 2013. Here are some ideas…
Tracing your roots
There is a global Irish diaspora of 70 million. Are you one of them? Instead of waiting for you to find us, we’re inviting you back for The Gathering Ireland 2013. It might just be the perfect time to come and find out more about your forefathers and forge a deeper connection with our country.
When you start researching your family history, you never know what you’re going to find. And with no fewer than four recent US presidents claiming Irish family connections, the chances of discovering an influential relative are not as slim as they might at first seem!
In addition to the 1.3 million church records available online, there are national repositories of material, as well as local heritage and genealogy centres around the country. Download our guide, Tracing Your Ancestors (2.5MB .pdf) to get started or check out: www.irishgenealogy.ie, www.rootsireland.ie and www.nationalarchives.ie
You can also celebrate your Irish roots and honour your Irish ancestors by getting an official Certificate of Irish Heritage. These certs are issued by the Irish Government to those who have at least one Irish ancestor. You will even be offered help to track down the documents required to apply for the cert. In practice, that almost amounts to a free start on tracing your roots! Find out more at: www.heritagecertificate.ie
We hope this will be a chance for you to feel closer to Ireland and meet family that you never knew existed.
According to The Irish Times (article by Pamela Duncan) people born outside Ireland now make up more than two-thirds of the population of the area around O’Connell Street, at the centre of Dublin City, according to a breakdown of the latest census statistics.
The electoral division in and around the GPO and O’Connell Street has the highest percentage of people born abroad living in any area in Ireland, with almost 70 per cent of the population of the North City electoral division born outside Ireland.
The electoral division, bordered by the Liffey to the south and Parnell Street to the north, has a population of 5,345 according to the latest census, which was carried out in April 2011.
It is one of six areas in Dublin city centre where the non-Irish resident population now stands at more than 50 per cent, according to an in-depth breakdown of figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) census by the All Island Research Observatory, a research unit and interactive spatial data portal based at NUI, Maynooth.
The 2011 census showed almost a third of people born outside Ireland live in Dublin. There are now 218,653 non-Irish born nationals living in Dublin, meaning one in five people living in the capital was born abroad. Despite this, some parts of the city and county remain almost entirely Dublin-born.
The highest population of Dublin-born residents are in the Kylemore, Carna, Drumfinn and Decies electoral districts in Ballyfermot, where up to 93 per cent of the population was born within Dublin.
Other areas where more than 90 per cent of residents are Dublin-born include four electoral divisions within the Finglas area; the Kilmore C division of Coolock, bordered by the Northside Shopping Centre on one side and the Cadbury plant off the Malahide Road on the other; and the electoral divisions of Clondalkin-Rowlagh and Priorswood B.
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