{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Holywell Trust Conversations","title":"Learning to listen - the Thirty Project","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1993,"description":"There is immense frustration across Northern Ireland’s community sector that the Civic Forum collapsed in 2002 and was not replaced. Demands are increasing for citizens’ assemblies, or similar, to provide an alternative voice to that of politicians, especially in the absence of the Assembly and Executive.\n \nAvila Kilmurray was a founder of the Women’s Coalition which led demands for the Civic Forum as part of the Good Friday Agreement negotiations. Avila makes the point that it was also the Women’s Coalition that negotiated into the GFA sections on recognising and supporting victims of the Troubles; women’s representation; community development; and a focus on housing.\n \n“The idea of the citizen’s voice, civic forum, civic assembly, whatever you call it, we thought was particularly important in Northern Ireland because of the conflict,” reflected Avila. “And because politics anyway, particularly in a contested society, draws the oxygen out from so many other issues, because everything is focused on (a) the constitutional question and (b) how you stop the violence.”\n \nOther concerns that were never mentioned, said Avila, included domestic violence – with civil servants saying at the time that it was not an issue, proven by the fact that no one raised it with them.\n \nAvila was speaking at an event to initiate a series of in-depth consultative events run by the Holywell Trust that provided mechanisms for ‘other’ voices to be heard. \n \nThese were the ‘Thirty’ conversations – so-called as they each brought together around thirty individuals who were interested in drilling down into contentious matters of concern, leading to them formulating detailed recommendations on how to make progress. Those topics were legacy; education; and providing a forum for civic voices, separately, in Belfast and Derry.\n \nCatherine Cooke was one of the ‘Thirty’ participants, who is steeped in community activity in the North West, but said that what she particularly valued from the events...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/PR1KfubV5mQbNCBb39558iwYKVHxNVNcf804_FJPYuQ/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzE3NTgvMTY4MDk4/NTg2MC1hcnR3b3Jr/LmpwZw.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}