Belfast's Mount Vernon

Ann-Sophie Morrissette, Centre for Creative Communities

100 homes, 8 maps, 1 vision

Driving up the hill to Mount Vernon in North Belfast, you may be forgiven for feeling slightly intimidated. Look past the sign at the gates welcoming you to the estate, and a mural of masked paramilitaries holding machine guns and proclaiming “Prepared for Peace, Ready for War” gives a slightly colder impression. But get past the gates of the estate, which was characterized throughout the Troubles as a loyalist stronghold of violence, and you will find a close-knit and safe community of young families, workers, and pensioners who have embarked on a new era of transformation.

Despite recent improvements to housing and the environment, years of political unrest have had lasting economic and social effects — among them, significantly higher unemployment and poverty levels compared to the whole of Belfast and Northern Ireland and a lack of direct services such as health and child care. Residents characterize Mount Vernon as a "pocket of poverty" housed within an affluent postcode, resulting in isolation and a lack of community/voluntary infrastructure.

The challenge for residents has been to come to terms with and articulate those issues housed "behind closed doors" and in doing so make Mount Vernon a bright spot on providers’ radars. The task has required a core group of residents committed to ridding Mount Vernon of its reputation as a hotbed of paramilitary violence and championing residents’ rights to a healthy and happy community.

Community Forum

The catalyst for Mount Vernon’s transformation has been a resident-led Community Forum, facilitated by community development worker and former UVF [Ulster Volunteer Force] prisoner Billy Hutchinson. Made up of a cross-section of residents representing all constituencies from teens to pensioners, the group has from the outset been characterized by a strong community spirit and resilience. In 2002, it had already shown initiative in improving the estate’s environment by working with Groundwork Northern Ireland to rid the estate of paramilitary graffiti and build a central courtyard in what had previously been a dumping ground known as the "Mucky Field" (now coined the "New Mucky Field").

In early 2005, the Forum endeavored to develop a ten-year strategic vision that would articulate the community’s wants and needs. As Hutchinson notes, “If you’re going to build a house, you’re not going to build it in sand. You are going to build it in a firm foundation — and this is a firm foundation.” Working from its infrastructure of commitment and capabilities, the Community Forum was well-placed to tackle the challenge of implementing a strategic vision.

Phase One brought in consultants Eddie Bannon and Gerri Moriarty, both Belfast residents, to facilitate the process of developing a strategy. A series of workshops helped residents get to the core of what strategy means and give them an overview of the strategy process. Working from the lead question "What would make a real difference to Mount Vernon?", the Forum split into working groups based on age to identify the community’s needs from the perspectives of its various constituencies.

This process resulted in the articulation of a range of desired changes and outcomes for Mount Vernon, illustrated through eight "strategy maps" around the issues of: arts sport and culture; community spirit; education; employment; environment; health; young families; and young people. These maps, drawn from the central vision “Mount Vernon is a place where people want to live,” have allowed the community to articulate to outside agencies clearly and with confidence the provisions they want and need. “That is much more effective than getting an external consultant who will write the same generic strategy from one community to the next,” comments Bannon. “They can’t empower people. People empower people, and this process is about the people of Mount Vernon empowering themselves.”

Community Artists

From the outset, community artists have been central to the strategy process, providing different and innovative ways to engage residents and help express their visions for the community. Artists such as Elaine Gaston, who led a performance workshop with young people through the youth club, understand the effectiveness of the arts “as a good tool to allow [people] to get ideas going, and to get excited about how to communicate those ideas to other people.” With Gaston’s guidance, the children composed a rap poem [see insert right] expressing their wishes, among them better play facilities and community shops.

The inclusion of artists — many of whom, while Belfast residents, had never visited Mount Vernon — has had the benefit of transforming outsiders’ perceptions of the area. Moriarty, who has helped recruit community artists, recalls how “People on more than one occasion have said they’re a bit frightened to come here and I have said, ‘Come and see. Come and be.’ If none of us are going to come and be, how are any of us going to move on?” The reaction of Mags Byrne of Dance United seems to confirm Moriarty’s conviction: “I knew nothing about the community before I came. I’m actually quite surprised by one, how close they seem to be; two, once you get in past the murals it’s actually a really nice place! I hadn’t expected that.”

Writer Jo Egan also felt apprehensive about the area: “I did have some preconceptions coming in. My accent is Southern [Republic of Ireland], so I was afraid people wouldn’t want to work with me because I’m not from a Protestant background.” Despite her fears, Jo’s creative-writing workshop was particularly successful, attracting a core group of adults who took a reflective and humorous approach to exploring community spirit. Playing on the misconceptions and rumors that abound about Mount Vernon, the group wrote their own front page headlines — "Bomb Factory in Mount Vernon! (A Factory here and I never even got a Job!)" — which were then reproduced to look like actual press clipping.

Big Weekend

As the artists collaborated with resident groups, member of the Community Forum formed a smaller sub-strategy group to plan for Phase Two — the "Big Weekend," a three-day event of activities designed to engage as many residents as possible in thinking about the community’s future. Alongside these activities, strategy-group members and artists would be having conversations with residents through the weekend about what they would want to see included in the strategy. Moriarty and Bannon led training on interview techniques, focusing on how to make residents feel comfortable to speak honestly about the community.

The Big Weekend, held at the end of April 2005, was an ambitious and by all accounts successful event. Activities included a Sure Start painting activity for the youngest children in the community; a high-spirited Ready Steady Cook competition, which featured two professional chefs cooking with residents; a Question of Sport, which attracted the notoriously hard-to-reach constituency of men aged 18-30; the construction of a pyramid featuring people’s drawings of their visions for the community; and the planting of a memorial rose garden, the first of numerous environmental projects planned for the estate. The last day of the weekend featured an exhibition of artwork collected from the workshops and the weekend activities.

In addition to the art work and on-the-ground comments, one-on-one interviews set in a "diary room" provided insight into residents’ hopes for Mount Vernon. All residents — teens, young mothers, grandmothers, young men, pensioners — were invited into the confidential space to express their views around issues of children, employment, health and education. These included: better shopping facilities, more play areas for children, higher-quality education, continuing-education opportunities, a resident health advisor to provide support and promote awareness of health issues, and a day center for the elderly.

The Big Weekend interviews, along with the encouraging turnout to the event (one-third of the estate) and participants’ enthusiasm for the activities, have confirmed the Community Forum’s unfailing conviction that Mount Vernon’s strong community spirit and residents’ determination will indeed bring positive and lasting change to the community.

The Future

Having now formed teams around each strategy map, the Community Forum feels confident to engage in discussions with agencies about the estate’s want and needs. Statutory agencies were invited to the weekend, and a month later the team presented its findings to around 30 agencies, including Northern Ireland Housing Executive, North and West Health Trust, Belfast City Council, and Belfast Education and Library Board and have since presented to the Minister for Social Development. As resident Moyra Wylie confirms,

It’s alright with statutory agencies saying "you need to do this and that. We can deliver this and that." But if people’s self-esteem and confidence isn’t there, it’s very, very hard to reach the people that need the services. The likes of this project does make a difference. We’ve involved all the age groups — from the cradle to the grave — and everyone’s needs are covered… Now that we know the communities’ wants and needs, a lot of the providers will sit up and listen.

Perhaps most significantly, Mount Vernon has taken a huge step forward in changing outside perceptions of the estate and of Protestant communities in general. Consultant Bannon remarks, “There is a strong perception, across the board, that the Protestant community haven’t got any capabilities or capacities within themselves, that they are under-developed compared to Catholics… What this is doing is demonstrating that ordinary people in a community like this can develop a strategy — and quite a sophisticated strategy — to bring about this vision for the future.”

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