‘5 ways to say your prayers’:The Art and Architecture of Curating People, Place and Creativity in a Post-Conflict Context. The Shed, Galway, Ireland 18th June – 23rd July 2013 Includes: 1. Co-Curation of Exhibition with Peter Mutschler, Director of PS² and 2. Morrow’s individual work as part of the exhibition, entitled ‘Departures & Arrivals: Academic Interactions with the Activities, Artists and Archive of PS² ’

This exhibition profiles the curatorial approach of PS² and the work of creative practitioners who have practiced alongside and with the organisation. PS² is a Belfast-based, voluntary arts organisation that initiates projects inside and outside its project space. It seeks to develop a socio-spatial practice that responds to the post-conflict context of Northern Ireland, with particular focus on active intervention and social interaction between local people, creative practitioners, multidisciplinary groups and theorists.
Morrow has collaborated with PS² since its inception in 2005, acting as curatorial advisor specifically on the projects that occur outside PS² . She regards her involvement as a parallel action to her pedagogical explorations within architectural education.

Morrow's personal contribution to the Exhibition aimed to:
-interrogate PS² spatial projects
-contextualise PS² curatorial practice
-open up the analytical framework and extend to similar local practices

The Shed, Galway, Ireland is a joint Galway City Arts and Harbour Company venture. The exhibition subsequently travelled to DarcSpace Gallery, Dublin (Sept 2013).

Recomposing the City: A Survey of Recent Sound Art in Belfast

This article introduces examples of recent sound art in Belfast, a city that has undergone radical transformation over the past decade and is home to a burgeoning community of sound artists. The text investigates the ways in which sonic art can redraw boundaries in a city historically marked by myriad political, socioeconomic,
religious and sectarian divisions. The article focuses on sound works that reimagine a “post-conflict” Belfast. These include site-specific sound installations in urban and public spaces, soundwalks, sculptures, locative and online works, and experimental
sonic performances that draw upon traditional Irish song and music.

Political Liberalism, Free Speech and Public Reason

In this paper, I critically assess John Rawls' repeated claim that the duty of civility is only a moral duty and should not be enforced by law. In the first part of the paper, I examine and reject the view that Rawls' position may be due to the practical difficulties that the legal enforcement of the duty of civility might entail. I thus claim that Rawls' position must be driven by deeper normative reasons grounded in a conception of free speech. In the second part of the paper, I therefore examine various arguments for free speech and critically assess whether they are consistent with Rawls' political liberalism. I first focus on the arguments from truth and self-fulfilment. Both arguments, I argue, rely on comprehensive doctrines and therefore cannot provide a freestanding political justification for free speech. Freedom of speech, I claim, can be justified instead on the basis of Rawls' political conception of the person and of the two moral powers. However, Rawls' wide view of public reason already allows scope for the kind of free speech necessary for the exercise of the two moral powers and therefore cannot explain Rawls' opposition to the legal enforcement of the duty of civility. Such opposition, I claim, can only be explained on the basis of a defence of unconstrained freedom of speech grounded in the ideas of democracy and political legitimacy. Yet, I conclude, while public reason and the duty of civility are essential to political liberalism, unconstrained freedom of speech is not. Rawls and political liberals could therefore renounce unconstrained freedom of speech, and endorse the legal enforcement of the duty of civility, while remaining faithful to political liberalism.

Belfast Soundwalks: Experiences in Sound and Place through Locative Media

This article outlines the ongoing development of a locative smartphone app for iPhone and Android phones entitled The Belfast Soundwalks Project. Drawing upon a method known as soundwalking, the aim of this app is to engage the public in sonic art through the creation of up to ten soundwalks within the city of Belfast. This paper discusses the use of GPS enabled mobile devices in the creation of soundwalks in other cities. The authors identify various strategies for articulating an experience of listening in place as mediated by mobile technologies. The project aims to provide a platform for multiple artists to develop site-specific sound works which highlight the relationship between sound, place and community. The development of the app and the app interface are discussed, as are the methods employed to test and evaluate the project.

Big Ears – sonic art for public ears: Reflections on collaborative training

This text critically reflects on the higher education public engagement training program, entitled ‘Big Ears – sonic art for public ears’. The authors detail the objectives and aims as well as the benefits of this initiative for the enhancement of the student learning experience. We consider Schmidt’s (Schmidt, 2012) notion of mis-listening and Christopher Small’s concept of ‘musicking’ (Small, 1998), and develop a critical argument on how public engagement has changed researchers’ views and attitudes about their own research. The text explores how the creative interaction with a young audience has had great impact on the students’ learning experience as well as on their employability/transferable skills, because Big Ears stresses the importance of pulling practice as research away from the academic argument of why artists should be supported inside an institution, and into the realm of the real – what to do when making art, how to make it relevant and applicable to audiences.

Fit for Purpose?:Challenges for Irish Public Administration and Priorities for Public Service Reform

The depth of the current economic and fiscal crisis has raised concerns about the Irish political and administrative system, and prompted calls for fundamental reform of our structures of public governance. Both the state and its financial system are reliant on international support. This crisis requires a coherent response from our public administration. There is recognition that this change cannot simply be a repeat or extension of the public service reform programmes of the past. It will need to be more radical than this. Over the coming years, the numbers employed in the public service will continue to fall and expenditure will need to be restrained, targeted and prioritised. The Public Service Agreement 2010-2014 (the Croke Park Agreement) sets out a framework for change. But there is a need to look beyond the agreement to consider more fundamentally the future role of public administration in the context of the new economic and social dispensation in Ireland. Our public services need to adapt to this new environment if they are to continue to be fit for purpose.

In this paper we set out the main challenges facing public administration and where we see reform as vital. We note what changes have taken place to date, including experience with previous reform efforts, and outline what should happen next. Where appropriate, we draw on national and international practice to provide exemplars of change.

Representing Irishness in Belfast’s Gaeltacht Quarter

This paper examines a place-making project in post-conflict Belfast, analyzing efforts to transform an area which has often been used as a byword for militant Irish nationalism and social deprivation into an inclusive, vibrant tourist destination and cultural hub themed around the Irish language (called the "Gaeltacht Quarter‟). The antagonistic and territorial assumptions about place that characterize divided cities now co-exist with global trends towards the commodification of difference as recreation or spectacle, and longstanding struggles over the representation of contested identities are intertwined with the struggle to compete for international tourism and investment. The proliferation of officially themed quarters in many cities across the world reflects the enthusiasm with which planning authorities have embraced the vision of difference as a benign resource for the creation of tourist revenue. Yet, analysis of „quartering‟ processes reveals that such commodification does not neutralise or evade the political potency of naming, representing and delimiting cultural difference. Indeed, this paper argues that such projects offer a valuable insight into the inseparable roles of physical and representational space as both loci and catalysts of contestation in urban conflicts. Bringing together a wide range of public and private interest groups, projects redefining parts of Belfast as distinctive quarters have been explicitly linked with efforts to deterritorialize the city. The creation of bounded, themed spaces as an attempt to leave behind the ethno-sectarian geographical segregation that parts of Belfast still experience has its particular ironies, but is in many ways typical of contemporary trends in urban planning. The Gaeltacht Quarter exemplifies both the importance and the challenge of representation within cities where culturally distinguishing features have acted as markers of violent division, and where negotiations about how to successfully encompass difference necessarily address multiple local and international audiences simultaneously.

Participatory Sonic Arts: towards a socially engaged art of sound in the everyday (The Som da Maré Project)

Participatory and socially engaged art practices have, for a couple of decades, emerged a myriad of aesthetic and methodological strategies across different media. These are artistic practices that have a primary interest in participation, affecting social dynamics, dialogue and at times political activism. Nato Thompson in “Living Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011” surveys these
practices, which range from theatre to urban planning, visual art to healthcare. Linked to notions such as relational aesthetics (Bourriaud, 1998), community art and public art, socially engaged art often focuses on the development of a sense of ownership by the part of participants. If an artist is working truly collaboratively with participants and addressing the reality of a particular community, the long-term effect of a project lies in the process of engagement as well as in the artwork itself. Projects by New York based artist Pablo Helguera, for example, use different media to engage with social inequalities through participative action while rejecting the notion of art for art sake.

“Socially engaged art functions by attaching itself to subjects and problems that normally belong to other disciplines, moving them temporarily into a space of ambiguity. It is this temporary snatching away of subjects into the realm of art-making that brings new insights to a particular problem or condition and in turn makes it visible to other disciplines.” (Helguera, 2011)

Socially engaged practices develop the notion of artwork about or by a community, to work of a community. In this chapter we address how socially engaged, participatory approaches can form a context for the sonic arts, arguably less explored than practices such as theatre and performance art. The use of sound is clearly present in a wide range of socially engaged work (e.g. Helguera’s “Aelia Media” enabling a nomadic radio station in Bologna or Maria Andueza “Immigrant Sounds – Res(on)Art (Stockholm)” exploring ways of sonically resonating a city, or Sue MacCauley’s “The Housing Project” addressing ways of representing the views of urban dwellers on public scape through sound art. It is nevertheless rare to encounter projects which take our experience of sound in the everyday as a trigger for community social engagement in a participatory context.
We address concepts and methodologies behind the project Som da Maré, a participatory sonic arts project in the favelas of Maré, Rio de Janeiro.

Philosophy and Political Engagement: Reflection in the Public Sphere

Do philosophers have a responsibility to their society that is distinct from their responsibility to it as citizens? This edited volume explores both what type of contribution philosophy can make and what type of reasoning is appropriate when addressing public matters now. These questions are posed by leading international scholars working in the fields of moral and political philosophy. Each contribution also investigates the central issue of how to combine critical, rational analysis with a commitment to politically relevant public engagement. The contributions to this volume analyse issues raised in practical ethics, including abortion, embryology, and assisted suicide. They consider the role of ethical commitment in the philosophical analysis of contemporary political issues, and engage with matters of public policy such as poverty, the arts, meaningful work, as well as the evidence base for policy. They also examine the normative legitimacy of power, including the use of violence.

Territoriality and Migration in a Divided Society: Lay Theories of Citizenship and Place in Northern Ireland

The study of citizenship has increasingly focused on the ways in which spatialized understandings of the concept can be used to marginalise and exclude social groups: exclusive constructions of national boundaries, local neighbourhoods and public spaces can deny marginalised groups their social and political rights. Less attention has been paid to how constructions of place can accommodate different groups’ rights and promote peaceful coexistence. This is particularly important in locations where migration disrupts existing understandings (‘lay theories’) of the relationship between residency, identity and collective rights. The present research examines how spatialized understandings of citizenship shape perceptions of intergroup mixing in previously segregated areas of a post-conflict society. Critical Discursive Social Psychological (CDSP) analysis of 30 interviews with long-term residents and recent migrants to increasingly mixed areas of Belfast shows that, while all pa
rticipants acknowledged Northern Ireland’s territorialisation, different lay theories of citizenship underpin the possibility and desirability of intergroup coexistence. Long-term residents drew upon understandings of the negative citizenry of the outgroup to argue against the possibility of peaceful coexistence within their locale, while recent incomers gave evidence of their own experiences of good citizenship within the shared spaces of neighbourhood to demonstrate that this could and should be achieved. The implications of lay theories of citizenship for the study of residential migration and mixing are discussed

Fashioning a city of culture: ‘life and place changing’ or ’12 month party’?

The current trend in public policy is to valorise culture as a tool for social, economic and political transformation. This paper offers a direct contribution to debates that seek to unpack and problematise cities of culture. We adopt a more circumspect approach towards some aspects of the anticipated transformative powers of culture, and in particular the tendency to fetishize the economics of culture. Our empiricism is grounded in a detailed study of Derry~Londonderry as the inaugural UK City of Culture in 2013. We question whether City of Culture was ‘life and place changing’ or a ’12 month party’, and reveal different interpretations of success. In our view there is more potential in viewing culture as a peace resource for overcoming divisions in a socially and culturally segregated city, rather than its ability to tackle entrenched economic problems. Moving beyond the specifics of the case study we also provide lessons for future cities of culture and more generalizable insights for the academic and policy literatures.