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It has been another good year for INNATE with plenty to report. We completed our poster series, had a couple of poster exhibitions, ran various public meetings and programme, sponsored strategy trainings for anti-fracking activists, and ran our usual publishing schedule (paper and online), as well as providing input to other groups and information for individuals.
Our online set of A4 size posters on peace, nonviolence, gender, human rights and green issues was completed with 84 available. They receive a substantial number of downloads but we need to promote them more.
They were exhibited at the Duncairn Centre for Culture and Arts, Belfast, for a fortnight (during which we also organised programme) and at the Corrymeela Aperture Festival, Ballycastle. They can be exhibited ‘anywhere’, either framed or unframed; please enquire – we can tell you exactly how much space is required for the full set. We will occasionally add more posters to this set.
We organised the visit of Andreas Speck for a week during which he ran three strategising workshops for anti-fracking activists (Belfast area, North coast, and Manonhamilton/Leitrim, the latter in cooperation with Afri) which went very well. He also spoke at an INNATE open meeting about nonviolence campaigning and training.
The full ‘quota’ of Nonviolent News was produced, monthly, including ten full issues and two news supplements for January and August. Issues averaged over nine thousand words and as well as news coverage which is often quite expanded in the e-mail and web editions (compared to the paper one) and contain regular ‘Readings in Nonviolence’ articles and columns by Larry Speight and Billy King. We also produced a climate change-busting cookbook, ‘Vegetarian and Vegan Cuisine: A short introduction’ as an online publication based on material which had appeared in the Billy King column; We added substantially to the INNATE photo site to include peace movement materials from the last four decades, both from Northern Ireland and the Republic; this site, has had over 240,000 photo downloads and now has over a thousand entries, included in twenty albums.
Our main site had more home page views than ever before and material is well used across most of the sections of the site.
Around International Day of Peace we co-organised, with Mediation Northern Ireland, an open space meeting in Belfast on “What is needed for peace?” which had some very useful conversations and connections made. We also participated in a networking group to promote International Day of Peace. Another public meeting was on nuclear disarmament and Trident replacement in the UK, which was organised in conjunction with PANA, and the coordinator interviewed the two speakers at this, Roger Cole of PANA and Janet Fenton of Scottish CND, on NVTV, the Belfast community TV station. As well as showing the INNATE poster exhibition at the Corrymeela Aperture Festival in Ballycastle we ran a workshop there on ‘Chasies – exploring violence and nonviolence’, As always we are willing to explore training opportunities and assist people who would like to use material in the workshop section of the website or tailor make training.
We gave out hundreds of leaflets to potential British Army recruits and visitors to a British Army Recruitment Fair; the leaflet “10 reasons to think carefully before joining the British Army or armed forces...” is available online
There are many other activities not reported here. The coordinator continues to run walking tours of central Belfast for visitors and to meet with international students of the Northern Ireland situation. Input was given by the coordinator at a NI Green Party workshop about nonviolence.
INNATE itself needs support and involvement. Leaflets promoting INNATE and what it can offer are available on request; your involvement (in many different ways) and/or subscriptions are much appreciated. Involvement can be from anywhere in Ireland – or in some cases even wider afield. Please do talk to us if you think we can help you, or indeed you might be able to help us.
Rob Fairmichael, Coordinator of INNATE
February 2016
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