Impact
This case study details impacts arising from the work of Mairs Dyer and Baker. In research-led civic projects such as Women’s Vision from Across the Barricades (WVAB) and Traditions in Transition (TiT), Mairs Dyer and Baker worked collaboratively with marginalized social groups, leading to impacts in:
- Enabling cultural understanding amongst marginalized groups in Northern Ireland, encouraging them to think critically and reflexively about how they are perceived in the media.
- Informing debate between and across marginalized republican and loyalist communities in Northern Ireland about the role of the media and how they might find their own voice and engage in their own media activism.
- Cultivating the autonomous self-expression of working-class women and men in loyalist and republican North Belfast by providing them with key media literacy skills and technical production skills.
- Engendering the political empowerment of hitherto marginalized groups by convincing them that they have a right to occupy the public realm and engage in a public discourse aimed at addressing matters of social and political importance in their locale, as well as in the broader political public sphere.
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Research Context
Mairs Dyer and Baker’s work is defined by a commitment to socially purposive research and civic engagement. Women’s Vision from Across the Barricades emerged out of a dialogue between Mairs Dyer and various North Belfast women’s groups, resulting in the publication of a volume of photographs or photobook. Traditions in Transition began as a project looking at the media representation of Ulster Loyalism. It resulted in a report authored by Baker, which was submitted to the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland (OFMDFM). Subsequently Baker collaborated on a documentary film, released as a DVD with an accompanying essay, an abbreviated version of his OFMDFM report.
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Sources To Corroborate
- Head of Directory, an inter-community arts-based social enterprise, which promotes access to the arts in disadvantaged communities.
- Co-Director, Trademark, Belfast.
- Expac Project Manager, Ex-Prisoner’s Group.
- Coordinator and Project Manager, Shankill Women’s Centre, Belfast and Greater North Belfast Women’s Network.
- Coordinator and Project Manager, Lower North Belfast Women’s Group, Tigers Bay, Belfast and Greater North Belfast Women’s Network.
- Coordinator and Project Manager, Star Neighbourhood Centre, New Lodge, Belfast and Greater North Belfast Women’s Network.
- The Director of Learning and Research at Tate, London.
- Co-Director at Left Bloc Media, Belfast
