The Shankill Mission: ArtEZ plants seeds of peace through art education in Belfast

The Shankill Mission, once a dilapidated building in Belfast,  Northern Ireland, now wears a new coat of paint—literally and metaphorically. Thanks to the creative minds behind the socially-engaged international Master Artist Educator (iMAE), along with local artists from The Vault and the Argyle Business Centre, it's become a hub of creativity. Inside, art, education, and community come together to tell a new story—one of resilience, camaraderie, and transformation in a city marked by its painful past. John Johnston, head of the iMAE programme, shares the story behind the Shankill Mission and how ArtEZ’s artist educators-to-be come here to learn with art instead of about art, and in turn return agency to the surrounding community.

A Belfast native, John Johnston devised the concept of site-specific education in response to his own experience working in the fields of art and conflict transformation. Over the past two years, he has collaborated with Cormac Burmania, head of the BA Theatre Artist Educator course at ArtEZ Arnhem to develop the iMAE college in Belfast.

The Shankill Mission’s history 

The Shankill Mission, located in an area left behind after past historic conflict and poor socioeconomic governance, now holds a meaningful history. Constructed in 1896 to provide food, medical care, and safe haven for poor newcomers to Belfast, it has been on the frontline of violent conflict since a divisive period in Northern Ireland’s history known as “the Troubles.” Stagnating economic conditions and politically-motivated violence incited an active conflict period beginning in 1969, tearing apart the fabric of the community and deeply dividing Belfast across religious lines. A once-thriving community, during this time the Shankill Road became one of the most violent areas of Belfast.

Though the Troubles have now ended, its scars on the Shankill are still visible. The Mission sits no more than 1000 metres from the notorious “Peace Wall,” a 25m-high concrete and steel construction project dividing the Catholic area of Belfast from the Protestant Shankill area.

_--quote troubles end

Rooted in centuries of sectarian violence between Northern Ireland’s Catholic and Protestant populations, the Troubles eventually became a conflict based more on the boundaries of British and Irish identity than religion. Though a 1998 peace agreement brought an end to major acts of violence, the tensions between the two identities remain to this day. This reality was further exposed during the Brexit campaign, which saw Britain exit the European Union in 2019, with many on the Shankill voting to Leave the EU as the majority of Northern Ireland voted to Remain. This disjunction has heavily contributed to heightened feelings of isolation and a lack of agency in the Shankill area.

“Since the end of the Troubles,” John explains, “the Shankill Road area has developed a reputation for being one of the most left-behind areas of Belfast. Together with the ArtEZ Artist Educator in Theatre Bachelor's programme and our local partners in Belfast, we are trying to change that story.” 

Artist educators as a force of exchange and change

While the Shankill Mission building originally had plans to be turned into a hotel, those plans were shelved during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We saw the building’s potential as a space for its iMAE projects,” John explains. “So we decided to join forces with artists from the Vault, a Belfast-based multidisciplinary artists’ collective comprised of 30 artists." Together, iMAE and The Vault's artists promoted the idea that the Shankill Mission could be transformed into a community art and education space. The owners of the building, the Argyle Business Centre, embraced the plan wholeheartedly, recognising the potential that having artists nearby could have for the local community.

Because of that, ArtEZ now has an entire floor in the Shankill Mission dedicated to its iMAE work, and the building has been refurbished thanks to a partnership between the Argyle Business Centre and the Vault’s artists. “We hope that this partnership with the Argyle and the Vault will facilitate future collaborations,” John says, “including a possible collaborative residency scheme with other ArtEZ programmes!”
 

Site-specific learning

iMAE chose the Shankill Mission because of its unique history and possibilities to encourage meaningful site-specific learning in issues-based art. For iMAE, “site-specific” means that a section of the course takes place in a location with a specific socio-political context, solely for the unique educational value and possibilities that the area offers. More than that, though, it is a crucial way for course participants to fully engage with the context’s culture, dedicating prolonged time to the place and its people. This provides education that is meaningful, impactful and unique to each participant and the people they work with. “The work we do here isn’t easy and can be messy,” John adds. “But it’s necessary.”

Transforming the peace process 

Even by its external façade, ArtEZ’s positive impact on the Shankill is apparent. Previously filled with broken glass, the Shankill Mission now hums with electricity and is filled with art and colourful flags from around the world (even an ArtEZ flag). The iMAE’s work at the Shankill Mission has thus offered the surrounding community something previously felt denied to them: self-efficacy and personal agency. While the iMAE’s finals exhibition directly proves the programme’s impact on the Shankill, the building itself also offers a tangible example of opportunity and possibility. “And if you can see possibilities,” John adds, “you can see the option of [real] peace.”

A community worker put it best when they said, “ArtEZ being here on the Shankill Road alone is transforming the peace process. It sends out a powerful message to the rest of Northern Ireland: that this university, from a different part of Europe, post-Brexit, came here because they’re interested in us, on our side of the Peace Wall. More than that, the iMAE participants come from all over – not just the Netherlands but Iran, Russia, India, to name a few – opening up the narrative with fresh perspectives and creating something with us and alongside us. By doing so, ArtEZ is transforming the Shankill, and if you transform the Shankill, you transform the peace process and the chances of true acceptance. This is one of the most powerful images of what the European Union was set up to do. If only it had happened sooner.”
 

iMAE: think locally, act globally  

The success of iMAE's focus on Issues Based Arts Education, socially engaged art, and practice-led research has now garnered international attention from UNESCO. Johnston has been appointed as the UNESCO Chairholder in Issues-Based Arts Education at ArtEZ, to conduct research on the role that arts education can play in conflict prevention and peacebuilding.

From the small seeds that ArtEZ has planted with the support of the AeCT professorship and the bachelor's and master's programs in arts education, ArtEZ represents new examples of how art academies can use site-specificity and art to build communities of exchange. These examples could change the narrative about the legitimacy of arts education in the modern era.