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“Playing Irish” Premiering This Weekend

In News, Playing Irish, Updates on September 13, 2010 at 7:58 pm

Playing Irish a 2010 documentary by Colleen Brogan & Zachary McCune will premiere in Newport

NEWPORT, R.I. – This Saturday (September 18th), Colleen Brogan & Zachary McCune will premiere their “Playing Irish” documentary at the Newport Public Library. The event will be free and open to the public. Nearly two months since the pair left Ireland, and three weeks since the team completed the film, the event will mark a celebratory conclusion to the Heritage at Play project. The Newport Public Library is located at 300 Spring Street Newport, Rhode Island and the screening will begin at 4:30 pm. A question and answer session with the filmmakers will follow, and items collected during the filming of “Playing Irish” will also be shared.

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The Beginner’s Guide to the All-Ireland [Part II]

In Culture, Games, News on August 20, 2010 at 10:20 pm

Since 1887, the Gaelic Athletic Association has held an All-Ireland competition to crown the top team in Ireland in both hurling and gaelic football. With a tough knockout tournament designed to whittle the competition down, the All-Ireland determines more than just a champion in gaelic games. It produces one. Tradition holds that the All-Ireland should be played in the late summer/early fall, and today the final is always in September. Croke Park is, of course, the site of this much-hyped culmination of competition, and has been home to the All-Ireland since 1908 with one strange exception. In 1947, the All-Ireland was played at the Polo Grounds in New York in an attempt to spread and popularize GAA activities outside of Ireland.

In Irish popular culture, the All-Ireland is an event revered like the World Series or the Super Bowl, and attendance at this final, ultimate GAA fixture can be quite hard to ascertain(as in this Guinness ad) if you are not among the two team’s supporters. The phrase “All-Ireland” is used on gaelic footballs and sliotars to designate a top quality product, where “inter county” or “club” designate less refined sports equipment. And commercials on television make frequent allusions to the glory of winning the All-Ireland, with Guinness playing with the popularity of the event in its advertisements.

Kerry & Kilkenny’s Dominance

The All-Ireland competition has been dominated by certain counties. Kerry has won 36 All-Ireland Senior Football Titles, while Kilkenny have won 32 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Titles. I say senior because of course there are any number of “underage” championships (like u-17, u-19, etc.) that should not be confused with the top flight championship action. Not that anyone in Ireland is ever confused. If you say “All-Ireland” people assume you mean the top-flight “senior” action.

To the victors go the Spoils

The Sam Maguire Cup, awarded to the winners of the All Ireland Football Title.

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The Beginner’s Guide to the All-Ireland [Part I]

In Culture, Games, News on August 20, 2010 at 10:12 pm

It’s mid August now, and the Heritage at Play team is tragically far from Dublin, the GAA, and the excitement of the impending All-Ireland Finals in hurling and football. In Newport, Rhode Island, where I have been working over the past few weeks, a small but vocal contingent of Irish summer residents have pushed at least one bar (The Fastnet on Broadway) to televise the penultimate games of the All-Ireland bracket. In Boston, where Colleen is busy with work there are many more places to go, including any number of Irish pubs in South Boston where GAA activity is among the highest in the United States.

But what’s it all mean? What is the All-Ireland? How does it work? Who competes for it? And why should anyone (least of all a baseball/pre-season football addled American) tune it to care? The answers are a part of this week’s Beginner’s Guide to the All-Ireland, brought to you a full four weeks since the Heritage at Play team left the site of the action.

Everything Starts at the Club

As our broadcasts have highlighted, the Gaelic Athletic Association closely mimics the model of the Catholic church in Ireland. Small villages and parishes of larger towns are represented by community clubs that may compete in hurling, gaelic football, or both. Take St. Rynagh’s that we visited in Co. Offaly as an example of a football only club, or Nemo Rangers that we visited in Co. Cork as an example of a dual sport club. Each of these clubs competes against all of the other clubs in their county to win the county championship. As Tom Potts of Nemo Rangers told us “the county title is the prize that everyone is after.” Every county club champion will have the opportunity to compete against the other 31 county champions to be the champions of the entire island of Ireland. But this is not the All-Ireland proper, this is just the All-Ireland Club Championship (which our friend Ross O’Carroll won last year in football).

From Club to County

While clubs within a county compete against each other, a county board makes selections from across the clubs in their purview to create a all-star county team (or in the idiom of the Irish, a top-flight county panel). This All-County squad will hold practices with players who are used to competing with each other, but now must come together in the name of county pride. The clubs may proud, but being a part of the county team is very special honor as the player will be celebrated throughout the county as a top-talent.

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Two Weeks Out: Ireland from Abroad

In Games, News, Updates on July 30, 2010 at 2:17 am

It’s been just over two weeks since we left Dublin Airport for Boston. Though it seems like only a short gap, we’ve substantially been missing the Irish, the life in Dublin, and the thrill of exploring the implications of Gaelic Games on the people of the Irish Republic. Which means we have not stopped going over things (like our footage), revisiting unresolved questions (like what is happening in Northern Ireland, and how it prevented us from getting to Belfast), and of course following the progress of the intercounty competitions.

One big thing we would learn after leaving Dublin was that a potential contact at RTE had decided to retire. This made us feel a considerable bit better about the failure to actually visit the Irish media giant and learn how they covered GAA events firsthand.

While we were in Ireland, Waterford had forced an epic replay with Cork by scoring a goal in the dying moments of the Munster Hurling Championship. Following on the RTE’s iPhone App a week later, we learned that Waterford put the Rebels away to take the Munster crown.

The Dublin (“Dubs”) Gaelic Football team, the very ones we watched be dismantled by Meath, have made considerable strides in their qualifying for the All-Ireland Football Championship. In the GAA, teams eliminated from their Provincial Championships are entered into a secondary “qualifier” bracket that can advance them into playoffs with the four regional champions for a place in the All-Ireland final. Speaking to people around Ireland revealed some disagreement about the appropriateness of this system. Some saw it as a second chance for losers, others a long needed multigame solution for weaker counties. Whatever the feelings, Dublin is taking considerable advantage of this second chance and is moving towards making up for that shameful loss almost a month ago

We got three hurls, three sliotars, and a gaelic football for our time in the Emerald Isle studying such things. Back home in the US with them, Colleen and I have both taken a few afternoons to play around with them and to show them to our friends. The enthusiasm has been incredibly high for the hurls, though actually striking the ball (and mastering the lift) proves hilariously difficult. Everyone has the same awe-struck reaction when we hand them a hurl: “wow, this looks like a weapon…”

And that brings us to the hear and now: Colleen is in Boston working at the Institute for Contemporary Art, and I am in Fairfax, Virginia at a little conference on the Digital Humanities. This project has already come up several times, and a bunch of people wish I’d brought the hurl to try it out.

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Chaos at Croke Park: Too Many Men on the Field

In Culture, Games, News on July 14, 2010 at 9:53 am

Headlines from the scandal at Croke Park

Croke Park, as we discovered, is a sacred place in the hearts and minds of GAA folks. In the daily newspapers, the stadium is often called “headquarters” reflecting the fact that the stadium is literally where the GAA’s central management is, and where all roads lead, with the All-Ireland final and other important games being staged at the north Dublin site.

When we first visited the  “Croker” we were pleasantly surprised to find the park very hands off and permissive in its attitudes towards its fans. We were not only allowed to bring our cameras in (THANK GOD) but also our tripods, and even outside food and drink a total no-no in American stadium policies.  The entire place was staffed by volunteer stewards, called Maor in Irish, who were sometimes generously slow in taking alcohol from spectators (“give it here” “let me finish it?” “…ok”) . And the entire place was remarkably open for moving about between seats, coming as close as possible onto the pitch, and most shockingly, even allowing fans to run onto the field if the spirit took them after a thrilling match.

All this is now under question around Ireland after a shocking Meath-Louth Leinster Senior Football Final was decided by a dubious goal. As you remember we saw Meath put away Dublin to get hear, but it was Louth surprisingly who were about to win their first Leinster title in 53 years when the ref awarded a goal that replays show was blatantly illegal. The goal when in seconds before full time to give Meath the win and the title.

Angry, several Louth fans rushed the pitch and actually accosted the referee. Several players also became engaged in fights, and in a hail of angry debris from the stands, a volunteer steward was knocked unconscious. While Louth fans and players call for a replay (these are a common way of resolving tied games rather than with extra-time) the nation of Ireland is scandalized by the violence at Croke Park towards match officials and the innocent steward. The safety and innocence of Croke park is what is most at stake, as the tranquil, permissive place we traveled to may be fenced and overstaffed with stringent security to prevent any repeats of this low moment for gaelic games.

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The Sunday Game: the GAA in media

In Culture, News, Reflections on July 12, 2010 at 10:56 am



(As always, Click on the blog title to see full videos!)

No we do not mean the World Cup Final, though we did take in that game at the omniously titled Bleeding Horse Pub on Camden Street. We mean the Irish Sunday Game, which is to say, the National Irish coverage of GAA action every Sunday evening and afternoon.

One of the things we were very interested in when we first arrived in Ireland was the way the GAA would be represented in media. This meant newspaper coverage, advertisements, television, and in pub settings in promotional materials. In this category, we have not been disappointed, with pages on every Irish daily taking time to dig into GAA goings-on, and to offer commentary on past and forthcoming games.

RTE, Ireland’s National Television and Radio network, leads the coverage of these activities with weekend programs called the Saturday Game and the Sunday Game (sometimes with the additional “live” meaning they are actually broadcasting a game not just speaking on it.

On Saturday, with a steady rain falling on Grafton Street, Colleen and I did a very Dublin thing and popped in O’Donoghue’s Pub to watch the “Saturday Game” which was between the local blue Dubs and Clare in hurling. Minutes earlier, Colleen had bought her very own hurl at Elvery’s Sporting Goods across the street. So while we watched the game and sipped Kilkennys, Colleen kept glancing at her hurl and tossing the sliotar to herself, thinking about when we would be able to take a whack at the game ourselves.

Gaelic Games are almost always exciting affairs. There is lots of scoring, but there is usually not a lot to separate the team’s leading to exciting conclusions. This happened twice yesterday (live on RTE coverage) with Meath defeating Louth on a dubious goal, and Waterford tying Cork with a last second (and very legal) goal of their own. Stuff like this is what pundits dream of, and so the Sunday Game post-coverage was all about the what-ifs and perhapses of how things might have gone. Between the coverage, ads depicting hurling and gaelic football all but made me forget that the World Cup was even continuing somewhere else in the world. In Ireland, the GAA’s activities remain in the forefront of national athletic imaginations, with soccer somewhere lurking there behind.

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Outside the Archive

In History, News, Politics, Reflections on July 8, 2010 at 1:12 pm

No work of historical documentary aspirations seems complete without the insertion of archival material. Nodding towards the film work that has preceded it, movies feel more researched and investigative when archival footage makes its way into the film acknowledging previous efforts.

Wanting this effect, I called the Irish Film Institute on a rainy Tuesday morning. We didn’t have any specific plans for the day, so an afternoon running through the Irish government’s film holdings seemed not only practical, but romantic.

My conversation with the administration at the Irish Film Archive began well enough. We exchanged pleasantries, I explained about our Heritage at Play project, and the Archivist seemed genuinely sure she could help us out.

But then came the problem: money.

“And what kind of a budget are you on?” inquired the archivist.

“A very tight one,” I explained, “we’ve barely the money to cover our transportation and living costs. It is a student documentary project after all, and we are American students so just getting here was expensive.”

She assured me she understood. She would waive certain preliminary fees. I thanked her.

“But we will have to charge you the non-commercial footage fee,” she explained.

“And what’s that?” I asked.

“200 euro a minute.”

We exchanged pleasantries, I told her I would check our budget and get back to her. She said she hoped to speak with me soon.

With the call ended I exploded in disgust. 200 Euro a minute! What a ridiculous fee! Here was an archive filled with materials that in point of fact belong to the Irish people as public domain materials. They are free to use, and free to be remixed/recycled/rediscovered. But at the cost that one would need to pay to breath the same air as these hallowed collections, its evident that they rarely get used. And why should they? With a policy like 200 euro a minute, they have been chained behind a financial cage from the people most eager, excited, (and impoverished) to use them.

This short episode recalls what Students for Free Culture and the Creative Commons movement have so right. Things that are free ought to truly be so. The licensing of the Irish Archives is that of objects like fields in a public park: you have every right to use them. But prohibitive cost of access is ostensibly the same barrier to use as copyright or restrictive licensing. So while Heritage at Play yearns for the wisdom of the archive, we will have to do with the pleasures of the park, where the free live in the moment unrestricted and unencumbered.

Note: out of respect for exactly this problem, all of the Heritage at Play materials are licensed Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution. Enjoy!

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Shout out: the Boston College Ireland GAA Oral History Project

In History, News on June 30, 2010 at 11:01 am

A statue of 18th century Irish Revolutionary Wolfe Tone (w/ nice sunglasses) is across the street from BC's Irish headquarters

When we talk about our project in the US, very few people have heard of gaelic games before. We talk about the locality of the games, how important they are to a national Irish spirit and irish communities from the most rural parts of Ireland all the way to the North. It seems novel and unique to an American audience, and a nod to the gap between Americans with Irish heritage and Irish citizens living on the emerald isles today.

Arriving in Ireland and describing this project to stewards on the plane, friends from Cork, and scholars from Ireland, we solicited very different responses when we told people we were shooting a documentary on gaelic games. “Ah, yes. ” “What about the games?” “What do you know about the games so far?” “How can I help?” It’s a familiar subject and pervasive presence all across Ireland, almost to the same scale as baseball in America. Consider it from the opposite angle: what if a team of Irish students came to Boston and said they wanted to study American baseball? It would probably get the same response: the sport is unique, but also so large and expansive that it seems impossible to start studying or documenting a sport that exists in so many levels and years of history.

Early on in the project back in the comforts of University living, Zack and I decided to get in touch with a project that was already collecting the pieces of GAA history. An oral history project, run out of Boston College/ Ireland, has been conducting, collecting, and archiving oral histories and sports memorabilia and ephemera regarding the GAA and the experience of the association on a very local and personal level from every county in Ireland. In 2012 the project will be turned over to the GAA Museum at Croke Park. Spearheaded by Professor Mike Cronin with assistance from Regina Fitzgerald and Arlene Crampsie, the project is unprecedented and dedicated to recording the complete role of the GAA in the lives of Irish people. On a promotional postcard, the project succinctly describes itself as “Our [GAA] History. Your Story.”

We met with Mike and Regina at 10am on Monday morning at the Reception Room of the Boston College/ Ireland building on St. Stephen’s Green. After brief introductions, we were taken down to the headquarters of the Project, a cozy collection of rooms and offices with a kitchen and mandatory electric kettle. Over tea and biscuits, Regina and Arlene took us through the nuts and bolts of the project, discussing both their project goals and the ways they conduct interviews. We learned much about the GAA Oral History Project‘s specific aims, as well as lessons in contracts, copyright, and deposit agreements when dealing with oral histories and story-telling.

We are so grateful for the collaborative support of the GAA Oral History Project at BC/Ireland and hope that our documentary project can be of use to them.

-CB

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Reading The Printed Nation (of Ireland)

In Links, News on June 2, 2010 at 3:45 pm

Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities contends that newspapers, and by extension all public media services, have historically allowed disparate individuals living within a country to conceptualize of themselves as part of nation. Bonded togerther by shared news, individuals are rendered into citizens, made to identify themselves within a larger social framework that they imagine connects them to other citizens they may have never met.

Informed by Anderson’s social theory, I am one of those people who reads the newspaper everyday. If not to imagine myself within the nation, I do it to read how the nation is thinking, worrying, hoping, and celebrating. At their best, public media can relate the consciousness of a people; at worst, public media project and distort such a consciousness.

In preparing for our trip to Ireland, I have attempted to find and read public media resources that might make legible the Irish consciousness. Failing to find any single “newspaper of record” I have curated a collection which I would now like to share. For anyone interested in Irish politics, sports, and business, these news sources are by no means exhaustive, but they do represent a way towards feeling the pulse of the nation.

  • The Irish Times – Sometimes considered Ireland’s “Newspaper of Record” due to its long history and diverse coverage (it leads Irish news sources for offices abroad) although its circulation is lower than other media sources
  • The Irish Independent - Formed of a merger between former pro-Britain sources and the famously Nationalist Freeman’s Journal in 1924.
  • RTE – The national television and radio service of the Republic of Ireland. Televises national political debates, sporting events, and news programs.
  • The Irish Examiner – Formerly the Cork Examiner, this newspaper still represents more of the South of Ireland even as it has become a national news source.
  • The Belfast Telegraph – A major news source for Northern Ireland. With an outstanding website.

23 Days…

In News on June 1, 2010 at 11:47 pm

Creative Commons Licensing - Hurling (a Gaelic Game) being contested in Ireland

There are just twenty three days between Colleen Brogan and I arriving in Ireland. Just two days ago, Colleen and I were fortunate enough to graduate from Brown University. Having taken a moment to rest, we are now making our final (wonderous) preparations for our trip and month-long shoot in Ireland.

Out of those preparations come this blog. Of course, all of our blog posts will first be posted to the Global Conversation blog at the Watson Institute for International Studies. This project is sponsored by the Watson Institute and the AT&T New Media Fellowship. Colleen and I are incredibly grateful for their support, and look forward to a great time in Ireland!

Stay tuned for further developments.

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