Let me know if you know of any others to add to this list, either in Ireland or around the world.

Larne, Co. Antrim – “Emigrants to America”

• See it on Flickr.
• bbc.co.uk – A stroll through Larne – “Migration from Larne”
• Larne.gov.uk tourism site

This memorial depicts a family emigrating in 1717, and their appearance is in marked contrast to the more common depictions of famine-era emigrants. They are well-dressed and relatively prosperous-looking; the woman is carrying a Bible and the boy is carrying his shoes. Their positioning, in which they look forward into the distance, suggests a sense of possibility and even pride.  The figures appear to be a literate, reasonably well-off family looking forward to the future.

The inscription on the monument reads:

This memorial, unveiled on 16th May 1992 by Professor Bobby Moss PhD of South Carolina, is dedicated to the memory of those first Ulster emigrants who sailed from Larne in May 1717 upon the “Friends Goodwill” bound for Boston. They were to be the first of many.”

“There is no other race in the United States that can produce a roll of honour so long and so shining with distinction. And who shall deny our claim to have done more, much more than any others to make the United States”.

Two related monuments:

• Coffin ship, National Famine Monument at Murrisk, Co Mayo. John Behan – See it on Flickr.
• Arrival, United Nations, New York City. John Behan- See it on Flickr.

These are closely linked memorials that tell different stories.

• “Coffin Ship” places the emphasis on death and suffering tied in with the departure -skeletons form the structure of the ship, and the figures are lying down. It is significant that this monument is in Ireland, where the Famine’s toll of suffering and death was acute.
• “Arrival” emphasises the successful completion of the journey- the figures are upright, and some of them are leaving the boat. Additionally, these are fully-fleshed out buildings and the figures on the boat have individual features. The sculpture’s location in New York and its more positive tone reflects the fact that for those who made the journey, there was the possibility of a new life. It also reflects the different meaning of the famine for the two countries: While for Ireland, the Famine was synonymous with despair, emigration and death; in the New World, however, discourse about Famine emigration, while acknowledging many of its tragic aspects, also reflects the fact that the large-scale migration was a starting point for much of Irish-American history.

Famine Monuments, Ireland and Canada – Rowan Gillespie

Famine Monument, Dublin

• Images on Flickr
  

Ireland Park, Toronto

• Images on Flickr
• Ireland Park Foundation
• Explanation of each sculpture
• Video presentation on the park

The Toronto memorial is unusual in that it focuses on the mindset of the immediate arrivals.

Falcarragh, Co. Donegal – The Bridge of Tears and monument stone

The translation of text on the stone: “Friends and relations of the person who was emigrating would come this far. Here they separated. This is the Bridge of Tears.”

• See it on Flickr.
• See the bridge on ancestry.com
• A photo of the bridge emphasising the desolation of the area
• The stone

Derry –”The Emigrants” Eamon O’Doherty’s sculpture at Waterloo Place

• See it on Flickr.
• About the sculptor
• “The Emigrants” (Arts Council of Northern Ireland)

This monument depicts a couple departing with their children and two grandparents saying farewell. Two of the figures in the departing family look backward at the grandparents, while two look forward, toward the port.

The sculptor is showing the relationship between the emigrants’ past and future and the people left behind. The depiction of two figures looking back and two looking forward highlights both the pain of departure and the possibilities inherent in migration.  The boy has a musical instrument, and the young girl is carrying a book;  both of these signify the culture they will bring with them to their new land.

The clothing and the figures are highly stylised, so it seems  that the sculptor is trying to represent the idea of emigration itself rather than commemorate a particular set of emigrants.

Sligo Famine Memorial

See it on Flickr.

This sculpture shows the vulnerability of the Famine emigrants – yet the figures are also demonstrating tenderness and concern for each other. In contrast to the family at Larne, they are focused inward – emigration is not for them a matter of looking forward to a bright future.  The young girl is pointing out toward the harbour, and ultimately to her future in America.

Annie Moore

Annie Moore with her brothers, Cobh – Images on Flickr

Annie Moore at Ellis Island, New York  – Images on Flickr

Annie Moore was the first immigrant to pass through Ellis Island in New York, which was opened on January 1, 1892. She and her brothers were joining her parents, who had emigrated in 1888.

Kiltimagh – “I’ll send you the fare” – Sally McKenna, 2006

• See it on Flickr.
• Departing emigrant of the 1950s

The plaque on the ground reads,

“This sculpture is dedicated by Bill Durkan to the memory of the young men and women who emigrated from Kiltimagh, Bohola and the surrounding areas during the 1950s.”

Many young men and women emigrated alone in the 1950s. This is an extremely poignant depiction of emigration: the figure is almost ghost-like in its positioning on the footpath of a town street, as he trudges along, accompanied by no one. The small suitcase seems to highlight his vulnerability, heightening the notion that he may be ill-prepared for such a life-changing journey.  The lack of pedestal gives  a greater sense of immediacy or intimacy to the figure.

This is a monument to the ordinary, unheralded emigrant, yet it is also very specific in its reference to a particular place and time. It is unusual in memorialising such a recent migration; many of those it is meant to memorialise are still alive.

Cork Listening Posts

Cork City Council

The Listening Posts are an innovative use of oral history. The repeating voices of the posts are like ghostly presences inhabiting the quays.

This monument is different from the others in its visual minimalism, as it would be impossible to tell from the appearance of the sculpture what it is meant to memorialise.

Other monuments and memorials:

• Irish Memorial, Philadelphia – Flickr
• Famine monument, Cambridge, Massachusetts – Flickr
• New Basin Canal Irish Memorial, New Orleans, Louisiana – Flickr
• Famine memorial – Sydney, Australia – Flickr
• New Basin Canal Irish Memorial – Flickr
• Irish Veteran Memorial Project – website
• Shot at Dawn Memorial – Flickr

International – monuments crated by other nations to commemorate various migrations

• Emigration Stone – Cromarty, Scotland – Flickr
• Emigration monument, Hanko, Finland – Flickr
• Monleone, Cicagna, Italy – Flickr
• Emigrant’s Monument, Feltre – Flickr
• Garden of Exile – Berlin Flickr, web, Flickr, Youtube
• Monument of mass emigration, The Three Changjiang River Gorges, China – Flickr
• Chinese coolie, Singapore – Flickr
• Lampedusa, Italy – monument to migrants who died at sea trying to reach Europe – web article, Flickr
• Migrant children, Fremantle, Australia – Flickr, more Flickr

UNESCO – Migration and World Heritage Sites

The film, which won the audience award at the Dublin International Film Festival, also highlights the role of Irish-Americans in establishing the sport in Ireland.

Related sites:

• Waveriders – the official website
• Tribune.ie: Film of the Week – Waveriders
• Independent: The Unheralded god who walked on water

Director Gary Wilkinson and playwright Tom Kelly created “Little Ireland” using archive material, photographs and interviews with descendants of Irish immigrants.

The 40-minute film has been an instant success at home, selling out two screenings in South Shields earlier this month.

The pair are now trying to interest Irish film festivals, and have sent out copies to film festivals in Dublin, Belfast, Waterford and Cork.
The film is available from the South Shields Central Library for £10.

See related web pages:

• Shields Gazette: Little Ireland set for screening
• The Irish in Jarrow

Theresa and Mary McGovern have launched a website featuring t-shirts with slogans in Irish. The pair moved to Ireland as children when their Cavan-born parents made the move home. Mary had worked in London for eight years before moving to Galway, where she and her sister opened a boutique called Pagan. They began designing t-shirts and hoodies with Irish language slogans, and have now decided to take their business global through a website at Pagan.ie, which launches on Tuesday.

The pair believe that the clothing line’s celebration of a uniquely Irish style may give them an edge in today’s economic climate. “We hope to grow through the recession with our online business. We think emigration will make people more aware and proud of their cultural identity,” Theresa told the newspaper.

She added, “Our customers have found it a conversation-starter as far away as Tokyo, New York and Sydney.”

Related websites:

• Sunday Business Post: Sister act gets shirty with new web trade.
• Visit the website at www. Pagan.ie.

The Quiet Men is the work of five artists drawing on their own lives to depict the London-Irish experience: Bernard Canavan, Daniel Carmody, John Duffin, Dermot Holland and Brian Whelan.

From the gallery’s press release:

Each featured artist is an immigrant, or child of immigrants, from Ireland. This immigrant status informs the work, which observes the margins of society and is full of stories, humour and tragedy. The church and pub appear, as do the launderette, bus and train. The theme of the journey is often present in the songs, toasts, poems and prayers of the immigrant and the artists do not stray far from the vehicles that brought them to the city and might take them away again.

Exhibition curator and featured artist Brian Whelan says,

‘Irish music, literature, poetry and dance are celebrated all over the world. However, when asked to bring to mind Irish paintings, sculpture or architecture or to name an artist, many will have difficulty as very few have been celebrated outside Ireland. One reason for this may be that a people that experienced famine, war, economic hardship and mass immigration, carried only their portable culture with them in their heads, hearts and suitcases. Poems and songs have few requirements short of a good memory or the ability to carry a tune, whereas painting, sculpture and architecture are less portable and need peace, prosperity and time in order to flourish.’

The exhibition will run from 11 March to 18 April at the PM Gallery, before it goes to Spain, Philadelphia and Chicago.

Complementing the exhibition is a photographic exhibition, “Irish Londoners 1950-1975″, which chronicles the lives of the London Irish after the Second World War. The photographs are from the Paddy Fahey Collection at Bernt Archive.
See more information at the PM Gallery’s website.

David Wheatley, who currently lives and teaches in Hull, says that he has recently in his poetry been drawn to themes of movement and migration.

“Irish poetry may seem a lot more globalised today than in the 1970s, but emigration and diaspora have always been at the centre of Irish identity anyway. Vincent Buckley is a good example. To someone of my generation, his book Memory Ireland is, at first glance, a strange and even shocking kind of document.

He visits Ireland during the IRA hunger strikes of the 1980s, and can’t understand why Irish poets aren’t writing poems in praise of the hunger strikers. I remember this striking me as incredibly out of touch with political reality.”

But having lived out of Ireland myself for almost a decade I can now appreciate better how the emigrant writer inhabits an Ireland of the mind, for better or worse, and it can be too easy and smug not to take that into account.”

But although the emigrant writer inhabits an Ireland of the mind, he refuses to be limited in his consideration of the world around him:

A lot of Irish writers, particularly the ones who live in the US, leave home only to have a kind of born-again discovery of their Irishness,” he says. “I’d like to think I’m more interested in discovering the places I go to in their own right, and hereby authorise anyone in Australia who finds me in a state of born-again Irishness to put me on the first banana boat home.”

Read the entire article on The Age website.

Read more about the Vincent Buckley Prize.

The book collects the stories of 130 emigrants who arrived from 1940 to 1999. The stories were collected by Eleanor McGrath and William Smith, who have both worked in the Toronto Irish community for many years. Ms McGrath is the former Executive Director of the Ireland Fund of Canada. Mr Smith is a professional photographer who reports for the Toronto Irish News, among other outlets.

The project will be launched this autumn at several events in Dublin, Belfast and Canada. The book is published by Liffey Press in Dublin and distributed in the US by Dufour Editions.

Learn more on the project at the publication’s website.

The Great Escape – RTÉ One
Following the fortunes of four families as they relocate abroad to pursue new lives and careers, The Great Escape looks at the challenges facing those wishing to relocate in these tougher times.

J1 Summer – RTE Two
What happens when a group of Irish students head across the Atlantic in search of work, adventure and more …? This lid-lifting observational-documentary follows the kids where their parents fear to follow.

Living the Dream – RTÉ One
Have you always dreamt of running your own business and creating a new life abroad? This new six-part series for RTÉ One, narrated by Bibi Baskin, charts six families as they test-drive their dreams. From a couple running a Michelin-starred restaurant in Manhattan to a Flotilla in Greece, from a campsite in Normandy to a boutique Hotel in Provence, Living the Dream goes global in 2008.

Death or Canada – RTÉ One
This new two-part documentary series for RTÉ Television explores a fascinating sidebar of the infamous Black ’47. When thousands of Irish emigrants were exiled en-masse by famine, the ensuing deluge almost swamped the new city of Toronto. Thirty thousand refugees invaded a city of 20,000 people, then just a decade old. This documentary follows the progress of a new archaeological dig as it reopens this forgotten story from the Great Famine.

The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce – RTÉ One
When an Irish prisoner in Tasmania in the 1820s was reduced by the prison colony experience to serial cannibalism, it was a story that rocked the Englishspeaking world in its day. This fully dramatised documentary, part of RTÉ’s acclaimed and multi-award winning Hidden History series, explores a shocking episode in the controversial history of Van Diemen’s Land.

Aisling’s Diary – RTÉ Two
Aisling’s Diary tells the story of a 16 -year -old girl who returns to live in Ireland with her Irish family after a period of 13 years living in Boston. The American way of life is all she’s known, so adjustment to south side Dublin life presents its challenges and difficulties. A child of the Riverdance age, she is a talented and innovative Irish dancer who brings with her to Ireland some flash moves and innovative steps – something that invites the jealousy and resentment of her school dance teacher. From the producers of the hit Bebo interactive series Sofia’s Diary, this will be a cross-platform teen series for TTV in the Autumn.

The following, while not strictly emigration-related are also of interest.

Blood of the Irish – RTÉ One
Where did we all come from? Blood of the Irish tracks the origins of the Irish people from east Africa, through the Mediterranean basin and on to central Europe. Mingling history and cutting-edge genealogical science, this RTÉ documentary is presented by Diarmuid Gavin.

Welcome to My World – RTÉ One
This brand-new four part series for RTÉ One explores looks at what happens when immigrants bring home their significant other – be it a wife, a husband or a workmate – to their land of origin. How will they cope with the reality of life at home?

New Balbriggan – RTÉ One
A new four-part observational series based in Balbriggan will explore the reality of living in one of Ireland’s most multicultural towns through the eyes of a variety of its inhabitants.

Where Was Your Family During the Famine? – RTÉ One
Journalist John Waters, economist Eddie Hobbs and model Jasmine Guinness, set out to find the answer to a question lost in time: what happened to their families during the famine? Mixing genealogy with popular history, this ambitious production offers a dynamic new perspective on this most significant period in Irish history through the personal quest of our subjects.

Who Do You Think You Are? – RTÉ One
Where, and what, have we come from? Six Irish celebrities, with the aid of our specially chosen genealogy professionals, go back in time, tracing their roots. Ardal O’Hanlon, Charlie Bird, Joe Duffy, Dana Rosemary Scallon, Pamela Flood and Linda Martin are set for some surprises as they find out just who is at the bottom of their elusive family trees.

A Light In The Window: Mary Robinson’s Struggle for Human Rights – RTÉ One
To mark the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, RTÉ offers this revealing portrait of the former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson. The doctor’s daughter from Ballina, Co Mayo, could have settled for a life of comfort and privilege, but instead, her beliefs, values and experiences have fuelled a lifelong passion for justice. She has battled relentlessly to give a voice to the voiceless and to safeguard the dignity of the world’s most vulnerable and powerless people, whether through her campaigns for free legal aid and contraception or by fighting for the rights of prisoners, asylum seekers, women and children. Today, she is one of The Elders, a group of elder statesmen and women, including Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan and Aung san Suu Kyi, who aim to bring their experience and moral leadership to some of the world’s more intractable problems, from Darfur to the Holy Land. We follow Mary Robinson’s work within the group and accompany her to South Africa as the Elders gather for the 90th Birthday of Nelson Mandela.

Some of the contributions focus on individual stories of emigration and Irish and Canadian life, while others focus on the Irish history and heritage of the Ottawa area. Irish immigration to the area began in the early years of the 19th century, with sponsored immigration schemes; judging by this book, the Irish heritage of the area is rich and deep.

The book also contains about 60 recipes, including such traditional favourites as barm brack, colcannon, champ, porter cake, beef stew, and many soda bread recipes. A treat!

For more information, visit the website for the Irish Society of the National Capital Region.

Pictures of the launch event are also available. (scroll down in the centre section until you see the link to the June 8 event.) You can also hear contributors to the book at The Gaelic Hour website.

Would you like to share what your group is doing? Drop a line to noreen@ean.ie and I’ll share it with Ean members.

There are a number of interesting exhibitions that those interested in emigration might be interested in, no matter what part of the world you find yourself in this summer.

Dublin: Strangers to Citizens: The Irish in Europe 1600-1800 is continuing at the National Library of Ireland through December 2008. It’s a fascinating look at a little-known aspect of Irish emigration history.

Liverpool: Fis 2008 celebrates Irish culture and explores links between Ireland and Liverpool. It’s taking place at the Novas Contemporary Urban Centre on Greenland Street, and will last until 7 September. For more information, see the artinliverpool website.

New York: Catholics in New York 1808-1946 at the Museum of the City of New York explores the social and political history of the establishment of the Catholic Church in the city. Much of the exhibition focuses on the experience of the immigration Irish and later generations. It’s on until December 31. See more at the museum’s website.

New York: “To Love Two Countries: Ireland’s Greatest Generation in America” features photos taken in New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia by John Minihan – a portait photographer better known for his work with people like Samuel Beckett, Edna O’Brien, Ray Charles, and Al Pacino. A book accompanies the exhibition, which runs through December 2008. This exhibition was opened by the Taoiseach on his visit to New York. See the Irish Arts Center website for more information.

Galway: The Galway City Museum has two exhibitions of interest: a photography exhibition focusing on the experience of Irish emigrants in Britain, and another focusing on President John Kennedy’s ‘homecoming’ visit to Galway 45 years ago.

Turkey: An exhibition focusing on one of Ireland’s most famous 20th-century emigrants, Samuel Beckett, is on display in Diyarbakir at the Diyarbakir Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It is part of a series of cultural events marking the 2008 European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. For more information, see the Turkish Daily News website.

Boston: “Celebrating Celtic Prize Fighters: 1820-Present” is an eclectic collection of boxing photography and artifacts. Runs through September 2008 at the John J. Burns Library at Boston College. For more information, see the website.