Former Fellow Will Maloney shows his camera to a few PeacePlayers participants.
A former International Fellow, Will Maloney, is back in Northern Ireland, still working at bridging divides. Current Fellow, Chris Schumerth, recently caught up with Will to talk with him about his current work.
Chris: “Will, can you talk about how you ended up in Northern Ireland the first time around?”
Will: “I came to Queens University in 2007 and was introduced to some Peaceplayers staff and started playing basketball with them. I applied to a program-director position and got hired in January of 2008. It was an 18-month commitment at that time. All the hiring was done out here, which isn’t how that’s traditionally been done.
“At the time, I was really into Troubles cinema. I’m a film geek. At the time I was doing a documentary about people like post-Troubles victims and former prisoners who were connected to the conflict. The network I made during that time was invaluable.
I guess my interest was a fascination with history mixed with a desire to make films. It was my opinion that the Nationalist perspective here gets portrayed most often in film and media, but I thought that was only half the story.”
Chris: “Hence the protests in the past few months?”
“Yea, those have definitely been a chance for certain voices to be heard. So much of the Protestant population has been pushed to a small part of the Northwest. A lot of them subscribe to this concept called the ‘no-surrender mentality.’
“For this place to work, democracy has to be respected. Sinn Fein was born out of the Nationalist working class. But most Unionist parties didn’t come from the working class; they’re considered ‘the parties of the state.’ So that demographic has had a history of under-representation.”
Chris: “Is there any hope for anything different?”
“That seems like a wider question about integration. Education is where I would start. The politics need to be taken out of the schools. What they’re doing now is far too costly. If the schools integrated, the cultures could start to mix and more people would marry across religion.
“But the problems here are really complex. There are so many social issues–like unemployment, paramilitary influence, drugs and girls birthing children at such a young age–that lead to discontent and sectarianism.”
Chris: “Where does your current work come in?”
Will: “Interface Diaries involves four weeks of going back-and-forth in Protestant and Catholic community centers and youth groups, asking questions to each other on film. Then they actually get to meet in person, so we have kids from the Shenkill and Ardoyne meeting. It’s amazing how quickly things can get broken down in that setting. The current generation doesn’t have the experiential capacity to hate each other. Their parents definitely do, but the kids don’t. It’s all in their head. For example, a lot of them didn’t know the flag was up before they took it down.”
Chris: “That’s plenty to think about. Thanks for your time. What’s the easiest way someone who might be interested could get familiar with your work?”
Will: “Check us out at interfacediaries.com!”
