Moving Lives was filmed on location at the Ulster American Folk Park, an outdoor migration museum in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, with participants from the Live and Learn Project in collaboration with the artist and filmmaker Mairead McClean. The film was originally shown as a multi-screened installation in the dimly-lit nineteenth-century Tullyallen Mass House in September 2011 and later developed into a single screen film.

“Moving Lives weaves together the stories of migrants from the distant past up to recent times. These stories are narrated in the participants own voices from memories that are personal or passed down.

They are rich, unique and important testimonies.”Joanne Devlin Threw The Irish Times June 14th 2012

The Tullyallen 17th Century Mass House where the filming for Moving Lives took place The final installation was projected back into this space on two large screens in September, 2011. Image printed courtesy of The Ulster American Folk Park.

Moving LivesThe ProjectFilmed on location at the Ulster American Folk Park an outdoor migration museum in County Tyrone, with participants from the Live and Learn Project, the film was originally shown as a multi-screened installation in the dimly-lit nineteenth-century Tullyallen Mass House. Moving Lives weaves together the stories of migrants from the distant past up to recent times. These stories are narrated in the participants own voices from memories that are personal or passed down. They are rich, unique and important testimonies.Reviewing Moving Lives in The Irish Times June 14th 2012 Dr Joanne Devlin Threw states “Memory sustains the migrant; its aide-mémoires described in this film – the treasured locket left as a memento, the china tea-set brought from Ireland to America that has survived intact for over one hundred years – assist in safeguarding the fading ties that still bind.”

Memory and MigrationThe film was made in collaboration with the Live and Learn Project of National Museums Northern Ireland, and presents the lived experience of Irish migration from multiple vantage points through space, time and memory.

Live and Learn Project The Live and Learn Project brings together National Museums Northern Ireland (NMNI) and Age NI in partnership to deliver a dynamic 5 year programme funded by the Big Lottery Fund. Using NMNIʼs collections, resources across 3 museum sites the Live and Learn Project engages with older people (50 years + ) across the province to develop tailored outreach programmes that draw upon the interests, skills and potential of participants and increase opportunities for learning and creativity. These programmes are diverse and include creative writing, arts and crafts, music and drama, intergenerational projects, reminiscence, photography, film and community exhibitions. The emphasis is on participants identifying areas of interest within the collections of NMNI and directing the course of their engagement with the support and resources of the Live and Learn Team. Participants will be encouraged to share their knowledge, skills and experience, to take advantage of new learning opportunities and to focus this learning back into their communities.

The project operates across the Ulster Museum, Ulster Folk and Transport Museum and Ulster American Folk Park.

Mairéad McClean's film Moving Lives (2011), a collaboration with the Live and Learn initiative of National Museums Northern Ireland, presents the lived experience of Irish migration from multiple vantage points through space, time and memory. Representing movements in several directions (immigration, emigration, return migration) and stages (leaving, journeying, arriving), the film weaves together the stories of migrants from the distant past up until recent times narrated in their own voices, through their correspondence, and in the multigenerational memories passed to their descendants. Filmed on location at the Ulster American Folk Park – an outdoor migration museum in County Tyrone – in the enclosed setting of a dimly-lit nineteenth-century ‘old world’ mass house, the film challenges the illusory fixedness of its backdrop with an exploration of lives moving through space and time, transcending standard chronologies and uncovering universal experience beyond the Irish context. The narrative that unfolds reveals that although migration may provide adventure, opportunity or even escape, the costs are somewhat less tangible in the short term and may only become apparent and increasingly pressing with the passage of time, sometimes over several generations. Memory sustains the migrant; its aide-mémoires described in the film – the treasured locket left as a memento, the china tea-set brought from Ireland to America that has survived intact for over one hundred years – assist in safeguarding the fading ties that still bind. But memory can be double-edged. The reality of distance, of separation from loved ones, of absence from family celebrations, and ultimately of the sacrifice of memories not made and of choices not taken are some of the lessons that emerge from Moving Lives that the current ‘Generation Emigration’ may well contemplate as they depart this island.

Dr. Johanne Devlin Trew is a lecturer at the University of Ulster in Belfast and author of Leaving the North: Migration, Conflict and Society, Northern Ireland, 1921-2011, to be published by Liverpool University Press in 2013.