The New Ireland

Welcome to “Creativity and Difference,” a podcast series from Creativists in Dialogue exploring the personal and cultural forces that shape creative lives.
In this episode, we welcome two special guests from Ireland, Caragh Curran and Christopher Curran. Caragh is an Irish language teacher and cultural advocate in Belfast, and Chris is a former professional footballer turned youth coach. Together, they reflect on the profound changes in Ireland since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

In Part 1, we explore their childhood memories—Caragh’s in West Belfast and Chris’s in the rural borderlands of the Republic—and the social, cultural, and political transformations that shaped a new generation of Irish identity.

Elizabeth: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Creativity and Difference series of Creativists in Dialogue, a podcast embracing the creative life in this, our fourth season. I’m Elizabeth Bruce.

Michael: And I’m Michael Oliver.

Elizabeth: And we are thrilled today to interview two visitors to DC, Caragh Nic Néill Curran and Christopher Curran who come to us from Ireland.

Caragh graduated from Queens University Belfast with a first class honors degree in Irish and Celtic Studies, and then obtained a postgraduate certificate in education from St. Mary’s University College. Since then, Caragh has worked as a permanent Irish [00:01:00] teacher at St. Dominique’s Grammar School in West Belfast for five years. Caragh proudly promotes the Irish language and culture in her local community and has a desire to give back to a language and culture that has afforded her so many invaluable opportunities. Caragh leads the Cumann Gaelic within her school and promotes all aspects of Irish culture, including language, dance, music, sport, and drama.

Chris is a former professional soccer player who has played with the world famous Manchester United, as well as in Ireland with Ballinamallard United, and the Cliftonville Football Club before becoming a passionate coach and data analyst. He brings years of firsthand experience in the game to his coaching, from his association with the Irish Football Association’s National Performance Program and other programs. And here in the US with the Catholic University’s women’s soccer team [00:02:00] and the DC Soccer Club. He understands the nuances of football and the importance of developing not just skills, but also the character and resilience of young athletes. Now in Washington, DC, he has embraced new challenges. He’s committed to fostering a positive and encouraging environment for young players, helping them realize their potential, both on and off the field.

So the focus of this Creativity and Difference series is on people’s personal experiences of different perspectives and how those experiences change who they are and how they see themselves and the world. Both of you have had firsthand experiences of the changes that have taken place in Ireland since the Belfast Agreement, also known as the Good Friday Agreement. So we know that you have valuable insight into this topic.

We’ve divided this conversation into two parts. First, we’ll focus on your experiences of the changes taking place in Ireland [00:03:00] since the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998. Then, we’ll switch to your work as educators in language, in sports, and dance, and more, and how both of you work to make a new Ireland. So, welcome, Caragh and Chris.

Chris: Thank you.

Caragh: Thank you. Happy to be here.

Elizabeth: So, as we mentioned, we’d like to talk first about your experiences of the changes in Ireland since 1998 and the Good Friday Agreement, also called the Belfast Agreement. We’d love to get a bit of your respective personal histories as well. We frequently ask our interviewees about their childhoods. So, we’d love to hear an early memory that captures growing up in Ireland during what is often called “The Troubles.” Caragh, you grew up in Ireland in the North, in Belfast, right?

Caragh: Yeah.

Elizabeth: So, what’s an early memory that embodies life at that time for you?

Caragh: Yeah, I grew up in West Belfast. I was born [00:04:00] and educated on the Falls Road, probably one of the most bombed roads in the North during The Troubles. So, you could say that I grew up in the heart of it all. Now, I was only about four years old when the Good Friday Agreement was signed but I have to say that I did have a really peaceful childhood. That was signed, the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, so that meant that there was always that sense of hope for us as the younger generation coming up. That sense of hope and opportunity away from the conflict, which was a really good time to grow up.

And I have to say that, my early memories from West Belfast or that it’s a community where everybody knows everybody. Everybody’s your family. It’s very close-knit. My early memories in terms of growing up there as well is that we always embrace the Irish culture. My mom and dad put us into the Irish dancing and put us through Irish-medium education. So those kind of key areas are community spirit, and culture. So that’s probably my earliest memories because [00:05:00] I started Irish dancing when I was three years of age, and then I went to an Irish-medium nursery school from a very young age as well. So, I would say community spirit and culture are one of the key memories that I take away from early childhood.

Elizabeth: Sounds like a really hopeful time and wonderful time to be entering the world as opposed to some years before. Chris, you conversely grew up in the Republic of Ireland in Swanlinbar.

Chris: Yep.

Elizabeth: So your experiences were presumably different. What’s an early memory for you that captures the culture you grew up in?

Chris: I would say my memories and my experiences being a child were probably a lot different to Caragh’s, but mostly because I grew up in a rural area rather than a city. Swanlinbar is a very small village in the countryside in Ireland, and it’s right on the border between the South and the North. So it’s a border community. We just enjoyed where we lived, the countryside. We [00:06:00] enjoyed summertimes, playing with our friends. We would’ve spent a lot of time in the local football pitch, and before I played soccer, we would’ve played a lot of Gaelic football, which is our national sport. The national sport is divided between Gaelic football and hurling. That could take up a podcast in itself, trying to talk through all that. But, yeah, my childhood memories would’ve been based around sport mostly. And yeah, it was just a nice place to grow up. Very rural, very community-spirited. Everybody knows each other. Very agricultural, but my family was not involved in agriculture. My mother was a teacher and my father was a technician in the high school. So we just had a very happy childhood. I have three brothers and a sister, so it was a very busy house. And we just, yeah, we had a great time growing up.

Elizabeth: Did you both have extended family in the area also that you grew up with? Like grandparents or aunts and uncles or cousins?

Caragh: Oh, yeah. I would have a quite small family in comparison to Chris. But yeah, we all lived in West Belfast, so there was no travelin’ here, there everywhere. [To Chris] But with you, it’s—

Chris: Yeah, I have a huge family. Not huge. Probably a [00:07:00] stereotypical Irish family. But yeah, my mother was from North, she was from County Fermanagh, which is right across the border. And then all of that side of the family would live across the border mostly. And then my father’s from County Cavan, which, that’s where we grew up, in County Cavan.

Elizabeth: So maybe when we get to talking some more about that, you could reflect on going to visit family and having to cross a border to do and what that was like. If you have any memories of that.

Chris: Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Michael: So the Belfast Agreement, which is often referred to as the Good Friday Agreement, and then in Irish—if you could pronounce it?

Caragh: Yeah, the Comhaontú Aoine an Chéasta or Comhaontú Bhéal Feirste. 

Michael: Okay, wow.

Elizabeth: That’s what it’s called in Irish.

Michael: Yes. That’s what it’s called in Irish.

Now, that was signed on April 10th, 1998. And it was credited with bringing an end to the 30 years of conflict known as The Troubles. [00:08:00] It’s clearly a pivotal moment in recent Irish history. Both of you were relatively young when the agreement was signed, but you must have memories of that day or soon thereafter. Now, you touched on just the general cultural environment, but how do each of you remember that day, or how do the adults around you remember it and how did they respond?

Caragh: Yeah. As I said before, I mean, I was only four years. But like I do remember in the years past after that, when I got a bit older that, that my mom and dad they were really proud in the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. It gave them a pathway to future united Ireland. So they took it as a really positive step moving forward and building to a stronger, better future, away from the conflict and the struggle that their parents and themselves went through. So yeah, I have to say, again, a sense of hope and opportunity moving forward after the Good Friday Agreement was signed.

I also have to add to that I [00:09:00] feel a lot of respect towards Bill Clinton, President Bill Clinton. He did play a significant role in the Good Friday Agreement and he helped with the peace process and reconciliation in the North and as well as Hillary Clinton as well, they’ve done a lot of work in the North. They’re affiliated with Queens University Belfast, which myself and my husband graduated from. They’ve done a lot of work with Queens University in peace-building, and they are connected to initiatives with education and promoting women’s rights and stuff in the North. So, I do think President Bill Clinton and the Clintons in general did play a significant role in the peace in Ireland.

Michael: Sure. And you’re a parent. I remember when we first moved into this neighborhood, there was all this gunfire we’d hear every night. We had these young children, and you said you were on this road that was the most—

Caragh: Yeah.

Michael: So your parents must have experienced an incredible sense of relief.

Caragh: Oh yeah, for sure.

Michael: And the anxiety, just lifted,

Caragh: Definitely. [00:10:00] [To Chris] For you, you might have a better memory since you were slightly older than me.

Chris: Yeah. What was I, eight? So it’s all coming back to me. Yeah, no, I thinking about that, I think The Troubles in that whole era is probably an experience that belongs to our parents and grandparents more than it does us. In all honesty, I can’t really remember a single episode of The Troubles that impacted me personally. In the moment where I was, I don’t know, part of an actual event that occurred within The Troubles. I was only seven. Perhaps that’s because I was sheltered from it somewhat by my parents. Or it could have been just because I grew up, my childhood was during a period where things were starting to settle down, and then obviously we had the Good Friday Agreement, which brought about peace of kind.

Yeah, our family would’ve crossed the border daily. When I was gonna secondary school, I would’ve, I went to secondary school in County Fermanagh, which is in the North. So crossing the border back and forth was part of [00:11:00] daily life for us. In the beginning, some of my earliest childhood memories, I do remember there being a checkpoint on the border. There was an army barracks placed right on the border, which would’ve been maybe two or three miles from my house. It would’ve involved a very quick stop by a, I imagine, an RUC member, so Royal Ulster Constabulary member. And yeah, some days you might have had some nicer people than others checking your car. Some might have made life hard for you. And I think in the past, especially in the ‘80s and ’90s, they could make life extremely hard for people who were trying to go home in the South of Ireland. But, again, from my memory, it was pretty much a formality checking where you were going, asking a question or two, and then letting you on your way.

And then in the years after the Good Friday Agreement, I just remember there being a slow dismantling of that police barracks that [00:12:00] sort of went away over the years. There were no stoppages and life just went on and I’m actually straining now to have memories from before that period because it was so long ago. And even at that, it was never something that sort of stopped us in our tracks in terms of getting on with life. You’d get stopped. You’d be asked a few questions and you’d go on. Yeah. There’s nothing really else. Yeah. I think it was our parents’ troubles, our grandparents’ and we’re lucky enough to have just missed out on and have been sheltered from the sort of end part of it.

Caragh: Yeah, I feel like we don’t really, our generation don’t feel like, carry the weight of it as much. Which is a good thing. But it’s also important that we acknowledge it and that we understand the struggle that what we went through.

Elizabeth: Speaking of that, anytime people come together to reconcile and heal wounds, as you referenced, positive energy is generated and that positive energy provides hope for the [00:13:00] future. So you are both sort of part of that new generation of hope. But let’s ask specifically about when you developed your connection to the Irish language. Did the positivity generated by the Good Friday Agreement affect your learning, do you think?

Caragh: You could say that the Good Friday Agreement definitely played a part in me picking up the language. I think after the Good Friday Agreement, people wanted to start reclaiming their identity again. They wanted to start feeling a lot more connected to their roots, their Irish roots and culture. Me and my sister are the only ones in my family—it’s only a family of two children, my mom and dad—so me and my sister only have Irish. My mom and dad don’t. So they would’ve often as a young couple they would’ve visited the Gaeltacht in Donegal regularly. And my dad one day went into a petrol—or a gas station, as you guys call it—to get petrol. And he was asking the guy that was working how much it was and the worker refused to speak to [00:14:00] him in English. And my dad said, “I’m sorry, I don’t have Irish. Could you help me?” And the guy refused to continue to, to even respond to him. He just responded in Irish again. So my dad came away from that experience saying, I feel ashamed of myself that I don’t know the language of the country and I don’t want my children to have to feel that shame or kind of embarrassment ever again. So from that day onwards, my mom and dad says no, that we would, they would put us through Irish-medium education and that’s how I came about where me and my sister were educated. And I have to say it was probably one of the best things that they ever done for us because we were bilingually immersed in an environment from a very young age. So we were developing cognitive skills from such a young age which really helped us later on in life. So yeah, I think that’s really the idea behind how I started learning the Irish language, because of my parents.

Michael: That’s actually, it’s a remarkable event. Because it could have gone any [00:15:00] number of ways.

Caragh: Yeah.

Michael: Your father could have said, “Damn.” But to change his perspective that way.

Caragh: Yeah. But later on then they actually ended up buying a house in the Gaeltacht area in Donegal and then me and my sister as young children then could be immersed. ‘Cause when you’re in the Gaeltacht, it’s the language of the land. So, it’s everybody speaks the Irish language. So we were able to really use it as children then, and go up every summer and spend our summers there at the at the Gaeltacht, in our house. Yeah. It’s been an amazing experience and I’m thankful to my parents for letting us take that opportunity.

Elizabeth: So I think a little later I want to talk to you about, you mentioned your dad feeling a sense of shame that he didn’t speak the sort of indigenous lightning of Ireland.

Caragh: Yeah.

Elizabeth: I think we will talk to you all some more about what that means in terms of the legacy of colonialism and such.

Chris, did you have any thoughts about your relationship or or not with the Irish language? Were there other family members who spoke Irish?

Chris: No, there [00:16:00] weren’t. I’m trying to think if there was, but I don’t think that—

Caragh: I thought Rory had Irish. Rory.

Chris: No, there’s no fluent speakers of Irish in my family. Maybe that does have something to do with the fact that it never really, I wouldn’t say it didn’t appeal to me, I would say it just, it was never on my radar that I would learn it fluently. Maybe because I just didn’t have a role model who had it. I think perhaps looking back at it now and being older and having matured, it may be something to do with the fact that we in the South, especially Cavan, those sort of border regions perhaps take our freedom for granted a little bit because just… I would say not by chance, but by the way that it was organized, the partition of Ireland meant that Cavan stayed in the South of Ireland. So we had our own state, our own government, and the other six counties didn’t have that luxury. They were still part of the colony of Great Britain. And so I think there’s more of a [00:17:00] motivation among communities or pockets of the community in the North of Ireland to learn the language to retain their identity, whereas a lot of people in the South who don’t speak Irish fluently because, I suppose, they don’t feel the need to, or they feel that they own their culture in other ways. They feel like they live in the South of Ireland, they have their free state. We use the euro, we don’t use the pound sterling as they do in the north. So I suppose they feel that identity in other ways. So there’s not that same motivation. That’s something I felt in the last number of years, especially.

Caragh: Can I just add to that as well? Like, me living in the North, I always have felt that I’ve always had to fight for the Irish language. Whereas in the South they had that luxury and it was there available to them. But for us to be heard and for us to get funding for different Irish organizations, we have to really speak up and raise our voices and fight for the rights of the Irish language and fight for status, essentially.

Elizabeth: Sure.

Caragh: Yeah, that’s the difficulty between living in the North.

Elizabeth: Language as an act of [00:18:00] resistance.

Chris: Yeah. There’s a huge debate going on now in Belfast about public sign posting and a recent act put in place to allow Irish-language sign posting put in train stations and in one train station in particular. And there was a huge backlash to that.

Elizabeth: Interesting.

Chris: So even something as simple as doing that, which is automatic down South, is something that nationalists in the North really need to fight for. 

Caragh: But the issue is that we actually we got an Irish Language Act passed along with an Ulster-Scots Act, which it gives us official status of the language and promotes the language. So we should see Irish, the Irish language in public life on setting posts and funding going to Irish services or education services. That act was passed. But it’s been a kind of slow process in terms of implementing all the things that need to happen. And I think because of Stormont being shut down for—or we had no government for how many years—[00:19:00] put a a hold on all of that.

Chris: Yeah. Largely a political challenge.

Elizabeth: Right. It reminds me of the province of Quebec in Canada which is overtly a bilingual province. But it wasn’t always, so Quebecios had to really fight for French to be just routinely as normal, as recognized.

Michael: Now I’m certain that in the decades following the Agreement, the positive energy was sometimes challenged by the same tensions that fueled The Troubles to begin with. Tensions simmered or even flared up during the Omagh bombing, for example, several months after the agreement was signed.

Now, I’ve read a bit about the bombing and it was called one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles. It reminded me, however, of an all too frequent occurrence here in the United States, a mass casualty event, which we, I think we had one only several months ago. So I’m thinking America has its own troubles, so to speak. And in a sense, sadly, I think we’ve just become used [00:20:00] to those kinds of events. But obviously, a large part of bringing people together is overcoming these kinds of challenges and the tensions that bubble up. So what was it like as teenagers navigating the challenges and tensions that might have arisen from these different perspectives or from the past, et cetera. Can both of you share an experience of overcoming those types of challenges?

Caragh: For me, I feel like I was never really exposed to many different perspectives because living in Belfast you’re automatically already assigned a political view depending on where it is, what community you live in or where you grew up. But in terms of opposing perspectives, the only kind of experience that I would have would be from speaking the Irish language. People would class me speaking the Irish language as political in the North. And it’s important for us as Irish speakers to say the Irish language is for everybody. And it’s open to anybody who wants to learn it. It’s the language of the [00:21:00] island. We should be able to celebrate that and embrace that. And I think that’s important to to highlight to everybody. But that’s the only kind of opposing or kind of tension that has arisen with me.

Chris: I think growing up as a teen, it was funny, I think my first introduction to the Protestant community really was when I started to play soccer. So it was a really funny thing. And Swanlinbar, it’s a really small place, there’s probably only 2- or 3000 people if even that. But there was always a Protestant church and I used to always think, Who goes there? Because I don’t know any Protestants. So I mean—

Michael: But there are always people coming in and outta church.

Chris: Exactly. Exactly.

Caragh: It doesn’t mean like you weren’t around Protestants in your community.

Chris: Yeah. So it’s not there for no reason. Obviously people go to it and obviously they live in the area, but you would just never see them. You didn’t know who they were, what they looked like. We could have been walking past them every day and maybe not knowing.

But it was a funny thing when I started to play for Ballinamallard United. It’s a bit of a tongue twister, but that is it’s a really good football club, [00:22:00] especially for youth development in the North of Ireland. Not just where I am. It’s quite well known for developing young footballers. But it is predominantly a Protestant football club. But through a friend, anyway, I joined the club and one of my first practice sessions, I remember the manager saying X, Y and Z’s going to pick you up. And I said, “Okay, are you sure? Is it not too long a journey?” But this boy who played for the same club lived a mile away from my house. I didn’t know he existed before that day. And he was in the soccer—and it was a really strange experience ’cause he was same age as me, liked soccer the same way that I did. And I just met him that day and we went out and I, it just dawned on me that there was this whole other community that we hadn’t been introduced to. And I think that’s largely part down to the school system in Ireland where it’s largely segregated in terms of religion. You go to a Catholic school or a Protestant school.

Elizabeth: Is that right? These are public schools.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. That’s massive. In terms of our education and development, that. [00:23:00]

Michael: And does that remain so today?

Chris: Largely, yeah. We have some integrated schools, but for the most part Catholic school to a Catholic school and Protestant school to Protestant schools. And that’s why a lot of people won’t be introduced to the other side of the community potentially until they go to university. Which is crazy when you think about it and when you see how other countries operate. But that’s just the way it was. Yeah, I really remember that as a sort of a moment of sort of significance when I started to play soccer at this Protestant club and I was introduced to a whole new community that I hadn’t really interacted with before.

Elizabeth: So were the schools overtly religious? During the instructional day there would be Catholic or Protestant, like, religious acknowledgements or services or—?

Caragh: Yeah, there would’ve been.

Chris: Yeah, like in our assembly every day there would’ve been prayers and stuff before school, or at least we would’ve done that at least once or twice a week. Yeah. Overtly connected to the religion.

Elizabeth: Were they actually connected to the church [00:24:00] itself? Were the instructors religious religiously affiliated themselves? Were they nuns or—?

Chris: Not my school, but Caragh, you go to a Dominican school, don’t you?

Caragh: Oh, yeah. That would be kinda, yeah, I’m part of a Dominican college, so yeah, we are definitely affiliated with religion, but my primary school would’ve been a wee were more lax about religion. It was Irish-medium, so they weren’t forcing you to go and take your communion, you were allowed to, if you, if there was nonbelievers or different denominations, that was totally fine in the scheme.

Elizabeth: So there, there could have been maybe people who were neither Catholic nor Protestant, they were either Jewish or Muslim or—that would’ve been a whole different sort of category of person who maybe didn’t fit anywhere. I dunno.

Chris: That’s true. That’s true. But I think, to be honest, they would’ve only had the choice of going to a Catholic or a protest Protestant.

Caragh: There wasn’t much there.

Chris: I know of integrated schools at high school level where I’m [00:25:00] from. But I have to be honest, I don’t know any integrated primary schools in my area at all. So, it’s the way it still is in 2025.

Michael: So that segregation, has that even been broached in the political sphere, or is that just—

Elizabeth: Yeah, in either.

Michael: We talk about, in the United States, my whole life it’s been talked about. For a while there was prayer in schools and then they stopped it 50 years ago and now, but then it would creep in here, creep in now. Then recently, it’s like posting the 10 Commandments at public schools. It’s a big issue, so is it ever even discussed?

Chris: Yeah. I think more recently, but I think it’s surprising that it’s not a bigger conversation in 2025 to still have segregation in terms of religion, it’s probably quite strange and maybe backward from the perspective of other countries. But at the same time, a lot of these schools are very old and how would you, in practice, how would you start to combine these schools and what would happen? Yeah, what would happen to budgets and jobs? And I think a lot of people are happy just to keep the status quo.

Caragh: There [00:26:00] are integrated schools, but there, there wouldn’t be many of them.

Chris: No, they’re the minority.

Caragh: The minority, yeah.

Chris: But, yeah, I suppose there are more starting to come about.

Elizabeth: There must be studies of the Irish experience and segregation in the United States around race. Because we had two separate school systems. They were not, they were separate but unequal. And I don’t know if the Protestant, Catholic, separate schools were separate, but “equal.” Anyway, it’s a much deeper conversation about how these divisions play out at the institution.

Caragh: I think it’s probably more complicated here.

Chris: Perhaps. Yeah. But I would say, yeah, I would say though that there are a lot of of commonality, too. Especially with, you say separate but not equal, I would say that’s probably the experience of a lot of the Catholic schools in the early stages of our sort of civil rights movements and stuff in our Troubles. Because the Catholic community didn’t have any of the rights really [00:27:00] that Protestants had.

Elizabeth: And a lot of this is in the North?

Chris: In the North, and that happened a lot around housing and voting rights and things like that. But I’m sure education was part of that, too.

Michael: I read that Brexit and the Northern Ireland protocol affected different communities differently in the North and in the Republic of Ireland. Have these events affected your early life or the communities you work with? Have you noticed a change in attitude, whether more tension or solidarity since the Brexit vote?

Caragh: Brexit is a bit of complicated one, isn’t it? Again, with our generation, we just put it to the back of our mind, so it doesn’t really affect us as much because we’re not in business and we’re not trading. But I know that’s a big issue for businesses in the North.

Chris: Let’s put it this way, it doesn’t feel like to us that there’s a great peace in the North. I think there is still a lot of tension, and I think Brexit probably did add to that throughout the referendum process and the aftermath of that.[00:28:00] A lot of sort of general protests, but I think it did start to antagonize feelings of, I don’t know if sectarian would be the right word, but it stoked a fire a little bit and started to bring a lot of feelings back to the fore, which probably wasn’t very helpful for where we were in terms of our peace process.

But I think, yeah, Caragh’s probably right, for the most part people who are from where we’re from, just get on with it really. And from a, from an economic perspective, I think I’m right in saying we have the best of both worlds because we’re still part of the European market in the North of Ireland, which is special a right that we have compared to the mainland in the UK. Just because of where we’re situated.

Elizabeth: Oh, so it was like a, in the North of Ireland, which some people call Northern Ireland, which is no longer a part of the EU.

Chris: Correct.

Elizabeth: But you have, you still have access to the European sort of economic community in ways that people in England, [00:29:00] for example, do not.

Chris: Yeah. Your might wanna double check it, might wanna double check it, but that’s my understanding.

Caragh: Fact check. Let’s fact check.

Chris: Yeah. But that is the case. And the big, the reason I say what I said before about it antagonizing and stoking feelings was some people protested for a hard border again, and some people protested for a border in the IRC and others actually went after there being that hard border again, the one that I said had been dismantled. People actually sought that out, that there’d become a hard border and that there’d be checks at that border and stops again. And nobody wanted that. Nobody wanted to go back to that.

Michael: So the positive, sounds like the positive energy towards moving beyond The Troubles pretty much put an end to these protests.

Chris: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I’m glad that we… the outcome has been probably quite satisfactory for most people.

Elizabeth: Interesting. Yeah. It sounds like the young people have [00:30:00] really, oh, have moved forward in ways that older generations cannot.

Caragh: Better ways.Yeah.

Elizabeth: I was gonna ask you about older people and how they feel about Brexit. You’ve answered that already in terms of just these old tensions coming back and being exacerbated by Brexit, that it sounds like those tensions were most pronounced, not so much with your generation, but with people from older generations. Is that a correct sort of assumption or understanding?

Chris: I think that’s fair. I think… I dunno, it’s a difficult one, ’cause I think feelings around Brexit from us in the North, probably a lot different than a lot of people in in the UK and England, Scotland, Wales. But I think a lot of young people were really angry about Brexit because they felt that there was going to be a reduction in the opportunities available to them.

Elizabeth: Yeah, sure. The inability to work in the continental Europe as a young [00:31:00] person really restricts you to this one small place. Most countries have a kind of hard national border and if you wanna go work someplace else, you have to go through a big process. But the EU dissolved those borders. It was quite remarkable.

Chris: Yeah, exactly. Why would you wanna get rid of it? But yeah, I think, again, you’d have to look at it, but I think from memory it was a lot of the older generations that voted for Brexit and the younger generations voted against it. A lot of the older generations, especially in the mainland, United Kingdom, England, Scotland, Wales, felt… I think there were a lot of feelings of insecurity and fears around immigration and things like that from their perspective. Whereas younger people, they enjoyed having the opportunity of that free travel and moving for work or whatever you wanted to do. And there wouldn’t have been the same fear of immigration among young, younger people. That would’ve been my understanding of it anyway.

Elizabeth: Let’s talk a little bit more about the revival of the Irish language and culture. So, Caragh, as you’ve talked about, you didn’t, you learned Irish [00:32:00] young in your life. Although it wasn’t the immediate moment of your of your childhood, you weren’t immersed in an Irish speaking household. But you’re now a fluent speaker and a teacher and advocate of Irish. Irish, and you can tell us more about, this is one of the world’s oldest written and historical languages. So can you, talk a bit more about the Irish language, which some people would refer to as Irish Gaelic or just as Gaelic, as an ancient and contemporary living language, particularly for listeners who don’t know the language.

Caragh: Yeah. As you said, it’s one of the oldest languages in Europe. It’s a really rich history to it. And the Irish language, the grammar and the structure around the Irish language, they’re quite different to English. And that’s why so many people found it intriguing to learn because it’s so different English. It has a real sort of like lyrical quality to it. And that’s shown a lot through poems and songs. People are really intrigued to learn that [00:33:00] and particularly, it’s going through a state of revival now. A lot more people, as I’ve already stated before they’re feeling that it’s more relevant now. It’s up and coming, it’s cool, but I think it’s a lot to do with the Irish speakers now that are raising their voices again and saying, we should be proud of this language. It’s so poetic. It’s so valuable. It’s so beautiful.

We have the likes of Kneecap, an Irish rap band at the minute, and they have stormed around the world with their their concerts and so on. And there’s so many different countries that are wanting to learn the language now. People from other countries wanting to learn the language because of these people like Kneecap. And there’s also like a lot of Irish influencers. Now, I am not sure if whether you’re you would know.

Elizabeth: I don’t have influencer know-how.

Caragh: Yeah. There’s a lot of like influencers now that are using their platforms to speak as much Irish as they can and raise, not awareness, but just to make it more relevant. And it’s definitely a part of people’s everyday lives now.

So, yeah, that’s the kind of background at the minute with the Irish language. It’s [00:34:00] definitely going through that stage of revival. But as I’ve learned it from a very young age, but I do think learning the Irish language from a young age is so important because you absorb it so easily. So for anybody learning any language it’s important to make use of those opportunities if they have them avail available to them. So I do think there’s a lot more people wanting to learn Irish our now than what there was years ago because, again, as I said before, post Good Friday Agreement, everything, it’s been a building block of positive things happening over time. And again, people want to just embrace that culture and the richness that we have of the Irish culture and are wanting to feel that connection.

Elizabeth: Etymologically, I understand Irish, as you just mentioned, is very different from English or any of the romance language or Latin-derived languages like Spanish, French, Italian, et cetera. So I gather Irish is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family and it shares some of its roots with [00:35:00] Welsh, with Scottish Gaelic, with Manx, Breton, and Cornish. None of which I can speak. Anyway, could you continue and give our listeners just a little bit more of a mini lesson about the roots of Irish?

Caragh: Yeah. It is a Celtic language, so it is under that bracket with the rest of, like, the Manx and the Scottish Gaelic and so on. It did like migrate from mainland Europe, the Irish language. I have to say though, that there was three kind of main stages of the Irish language in terms of context. So it started out as Old Irish, and then that was up until the 10th century, and then it went to Middle Irish, and then it’s now Modern Irish, and that’s what we’re using now presently. So it’s evolved over time like any language evolves. It evolves and changes. So it has definitely developed over that period of time. But as you said, it is an indigenous language. It’s a minority language. And, yeah, the English and kind of colonization led to the suppression of the Irish [00:36:00] language. So that’s the kind of history behind where we are today.

Michael: Speaking of colonialization and the suppression of the Irish language by the English, we’ve interviewed numerous people that have come from different nations and cultures, and almost all of these people we’ve interviewed, they speak multiple languages, including their native indigenous language as well as languages of former colonizers like English or Spanish, French, Portuguese, et cetera. And some have referenced the history of what is called linguistic imperialism, so it seems to us that the imposition of English language in Ireland is an example of this linguistic imperialism. Could you talk about the preservation and continued embrace of Irish language as an act of cultural pride and preservation?

Caragh: In terms of the preservation of the language, we have to thank the Gaeltacht areas for preserving the language. It was those families in those rural areas on the coasts that preserved it and kept it alive of obviously after the, colonization and [00:37:00] so on. And they kept it alive, they used it at home, they spread it to their children and further on. But we have those people to thank in the Gaeltacht area is for that. And you’ll find that the Gaeltacht now, and it has been for many years now, where it’s a retreat where students will go to the Gaeltacht areas and visit the Gaeltacht areas, and we’ll stay there for two, three weeks and they’re immersed in the pure language and culture—

Michael: And could you just describe what a Gaeltacht is?

Caragh: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It’s basically just where students will go to learn Irish, but they live with the families in that area who speak it on a daily basis at home and everywhere, in the shops as they’re going shopping, all services are through Irish. So basically, the students are getting that opportunity to be fully immersed in the language as well as the culture. So they’ll also be involved in the Gaelic games, sports, during their summer course. They’ll be involved in Irish dancing. They’ll be [00:38:00] taught Irish songs, poems, they’ll go to mass through the the medium of Irish. So that is crucial in keeping the Irish language alive for sure. You know that children and students are still going to these summer courses every single year. And that, that helps us to continue to grow the language on the island.

Chris: What does Gaeltacht talk mean? I should know that.

Caragh: Gale just means an area of—

Chris: But is there an English translation for Gaeltacht talk?

Caragh: Gale just means like Irish person and then, no, so there’s no, like literal—Gaeltacht literally just means an area where the Irish language is predominantly spoken. And that’s the language of the home.

Michael: And just, the number of people I’ve said, “We’re gonna interview someone who speaks Irish.” “You mean Gaelic?” Was there a decision not to use Gaelic, because that’s how, when I was studying English, I would, oh, there’s the Gaelic language. Yeah.  Was there a decision about switching those?

Caragh: Well I, as an Irish speaker, we never referred the Irish language as Gaelic. It seems to be every other country will refer to the Irish language as [00:39:00] Gaelic. But I would use Gaelic in terms of like Scottish Gaelic. Which is Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic. I would use it for that language. But Irish is called “Gaeilge” technically. But it is under the Celtic language is brunch, so people get mixed up in that it’s Gaelic. But that’s, I would connect that more with Scottish Gaelic.

Elizabeth: Oh, okay. So let me go back to these areas that you were talking about, the—

Caragh: Gaeltacht Yep.

Elizabeth: Gaeltacht. So it sounds like in today’s world or in contemporary times, this is a pretty celebratory and kind of cultural survival, proud places of cultural survival and language integrity. But you said earlier that the language survived because it was in these sort of remote regions. And so, when the language was being, and the culture was being embraced in these remote areas, was there a consciousness that they were doing this very serious work of cultural and linguistic preservation. Have those regions always [00:40:00] understood themselves to be charged with or tasked with this rather sacred duty of cultural preservation?

Caragh: That’s a good question. It’s probably a difficult one to answer, but I do think they they understand that a lot of it did lie with them in preserving it. And I do think that sometimes that other parts of Ireland maybe didn’t actually have the recognition that’s what they were doing. They didn’t think too much about it. But if it wasn’t for those families in those rocky rural, coastal Gaeltachts, there wouldn’t have been any area of Ireland that predominantly spoke the language. And then where does that leave us in relation to the status? Yeah, I think, yeah, it’s a difficult question to answer, but I think that’s the best I can do.

Michael: Because I’ve always, I always understood that England consciously tried to suppress the Irish language.

Caragh: Yeah.

Michael: So did these communities try to remain secretive? Did, were they—I guess they were out away from the general population, because otherwise England might attempt to break them up.

Caragh: They’re [00:41:00] mostly in the south, so that’s where the Gaeltachts were. So they felt that maybe they were more protected, they were protecting the language. And it was easier for them to protect the language ’cause they were in the South.

Chris: And also they are like really remote. But the ones I know are, you have Donegal, which is the top of Ireland, like way out in the northwest. Like really remote, coastal, out way out on its own. And then Galway would have an area which, again, to the west, remote out on the coastline. Kerry, which is the southern tip coastline area. So yeah, there could be something about that, that it was in these remote parts, which it was more difficult to dispel maybe.

Caragh: Yeah. This is just another kind of bit of information just to add to that. When they, when the English colonized, they pushed us towards the left of the island. Because they wanted the best land, the land that was not as rocky, not as, you know, so that they were able to make a use of the land the best they could. So that’s why you’ll find the Gaeltachts areas are on the coast, but on rocky [00:42:00] areas that had less resources to grow crops and so on.

Elizabeth: Sure. In the US, you have to look at the plight of the Native Americans who were pushed into these barren reservation lands from where they had been. There’s lots and lots of examples people who’ve been subjugated over time. Which is probably where your dad’s sense of, you mentioned shame, but there is shame in having been subordinated. It shouldn’t be because it’s not your fault. You just, yeah.

Caragh: Yeah, like he didn’t actually want to use the word belittled because he felt like he should have known the language.

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The Creativists in Dialogue podcast is supported in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and subscribers like you. The Theatre in Community podcast series is supported in part by Humanities DC. Thanks.

[END OF PART 1]

Welcome back to Creativity and Difference, a podcast from Creativsts in Dialogue. In Part 1, we explored Caragh and Chris Curran’s personal experiences growing up in Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement. Now, in Part 2, we shift our focus to their work as educators, artists, and coaches helping shape a new Ireland through language, sport, and cultural expression.
Caragh shares her passion for the revival of the Irish language, her experience as a Fulbright Scholar, and her life in dance. Chris reflects on how football bridges divided communities and how data is transforming the game. Together, they offer insight into identity, resilience, and the power of creativity to build connection—across borders and generations.

Michael: I would love to hear some Irish. Now that we’re talking, I’ve gone online and read some Irish poems, the translations of them and I think I even had Google read some for me, but that’s a Google. Anyway.

Caragh: Yeah, of course. So basically the most common one, and you’ve probably heard this before now, but to say hello Irish, you say, “Dia duit.” Jee-ah-ditch. [00:43:00] But the literal translation of that is “God be with you.” So that’s the kinda lyrical, poetic things that kind of are behind the language. So when you need to say hello back to someone, you say, “Dia is Muire duit.” which means “God and Mary be with you.” So you’re saying, “God be with you” and then “God and Mary be with you.” So, “Dia duit” and “Dia is Muire duit.”

And then you have like lovely Irish proverbs like “Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam,” which means, “a country without a language is a country without a soul.” You have “Is fearr Gaeilge briste ná Béarla cliste,” and that’s another beautiful, one of my favorite Irish proverbs. And that means “broken Irish is better than clever English.” So that’s a that’s a really, that’s a really—

Michael: Isn’t that the truth?

Caragh: That’s a really common one that we try to spread around. People do find it difficult to learn the Irish language ’cause it is difficult to learn, but we’re just saying, look, it’s better to just try and make the [00:44:00] most of that broken Irish than yeah. So there’s a few phrases for you.

Elizabeth: That’s very cool.

Michael: I just, again, I’ve studied a lot of Irish playwrights all written in English. They’re just so noted for the lyricism. It sounds like Irish is an extremely lyrical language and the lyricism bled into their use of English.

Caragh: Yeah, for sure. And people don’t realize that, so like the likes of “the glass broke into smithereens” “smithereens” comes from the Irish “smidiríní.”s You have words like “galore,” which like you food galore on the table. That comes from “go leor,” which means “enough” in Irish. “Brogue” is shoe. And “craic,” I’m sure you’ve heard of the word, “Cad é an—“ or “What’s the craic”? Have you ever heard of that phrase?

Elizabeth: Yeah I think I’ve heard of it. I haven’t used it, though.

Caragh: It’s basically just like saying, “What’s up?” “What’s the story?” What’s the craic?

Elizabeth: There’s a new museum, newish museum in DC called the Planet Word Museum, which has got this amazing, fantastic video installation that has all [00:45:00] a whole giant wall of words in there. They, the words pop out. Or, or are illuminated, depending on this language or that language. And there are a whole bunch of Irish words in there. Some of what you said, shenanigans or hooligan or other words like that. So I’m, and you’ve mentioned some words that people wouldn’t realize from Irish.

Caragh: Yeah. And then there’s like a phrase that I love talking about in Ireland, I don’t think it’s common here to say this in America, but like, “My mum’s given out to me.” “Giving out to me” means like, in Ireland, she’s, so giving out, so we would say, “My mom’s given out to me.” But that comes from the Irish “a thabhairt amach” which means “to give out.” So, yeah, there’s a lot of connections that people don’t realize that they’re saying, but it actually came from the Irish language. Yeah.

Elizabeth: Interesting. Yeah, it’s just fascinating. It’s, on the one hand, it’s really beautiful that we are all blended together linguistically across these multiple languages. Speaking of that blending, you, as an educator of the Irish language, as [00:46:00] someone who teaches Irish both at home and abroad—and you’ve been talking about this, but how, what changes have you seen in people and how they relate to the Irish language? You’re here at Catholic University of America. There are young people, or maybe not so young people in the US who are studying Irish, and I’m just wondering what the attitudes are.

Caragh: Again, the changes have only been positive across Ireland and across the likes of the US of really opened my eyes up to the amount of people in the US that are learning the language. I was on an immersion weekend in Pennsylvania a couple of months ago when there was about a hundred people for all from all different parts of America in this one facility for the weekend, learning Irish. A lot of ’em were fluent. A lot of ’em were different levels of Irish. Again, I think with America and Ireland, Americans are proud of their ancestry. And there’s a lot of connections, obviously, to Ireland with America. So a lot of people want to connect to that kind of heritage and their ancestors. So that’s the kind of vibe that I’m getting [00:47:00] since I’ve been here teaching it.

But in terms of, you were saying, how do people relate to the Irish language, just in general, there’s more and more people, as I’ve said already, learning it. And I teach an online class every week and there’s people from loads of different countries learning that. And it’s because it’s a minority language, but there’s been so much talk about it recently, and people are just more aware of kind of the value that it holds. And again, as I said before, how lyrical and beautiful it is to learn. Again, there’s no literal translation from English to Irish or Irish to English. So you kinda have to work around it and make your own sense of the translations when you’re learning it. And that’s what intrigues people the most when they’re learning it, it challenges them. I think a lot of the time as well the Irish culture at the moment is thriving. Music, song, dance sport. And people just wanna continue to be immersed in that.

Michael: So Chris, now I’ve read that Irish is the official language of the Republic of Ireland. So what is your relationship to Irish?

Chris: Not enough, [00:48:00] probably. I think, no, I’d love to have the language. And I’m sure Caragh would really love for me to have the language and she could then speak to me in the language.

Caragh: He actually is, he actually has very good basics. He just needs to work on it.

Chris: Yeah. So in primary school, Irish was a class like mathematics or English or science, religion, whatever, we would’ve done it was a class. And then in secondary school, we would’ve then branched out and learned Irish and French. But the problem was when I went to secondary school, I crossed over into the North of Ireland and they were learning Irish for the first time. And so I relaxed on my Irish that I already had, and they were learning it for the first time. And it just slowed down my development in terms of Irish and then if I had any interest in learning it fluently, it evaporated in that part of my growing up.

But I do I do love the language and I love hearing Carragh talk it, and I love watching from a distance how it’s starting to revive [00:49:00] and re-energize now at the moment. I don’t know if Kneecap, but they’re doing a huge amount now in the public sphere with their film that they brought out a few months ago with Michael Fassbender in it, and their tour.

Michael: So now, Kneecap, that’s the rap.

Caragh: Yeah, that’s the rap band.

Michael: They do, they perform in Irish?

Chris: In Irish, yeah. Yeah. And rap. So, yeah, it’s interesting. We’re not condoning any of the language.

Caragh: I actually, my sister was in one of the members in Kneecap’s primary school class. So we grew up, we have grew up around those guys.

Elizabeth: Is there a lot of profanity? Irish profanity. 

Caragh: Yeah.

Elizabeth: There must be Irish profanity.

Chris: We’re not, yeah, we’re not condoning the language or the subject matter that comes up from time to time, but—

Elizabeth: Colorful language.

Caragh: They’re doing great things. They’re doing great things and they’re using their platform a lot.

Chris: Yeah. But no I do think it’s a beautiful language, obviously—

Caragh: I actually went to see them in, they were in DC in October when I first moved over so I went to see them and it was absolutely packed out. It was just [00:50:00] amazing to see so many American people like singing Irish rap songs, I was like, this is amazing. And I actually was all, I was by myself and I was like, I don’t need anybody. I’m happy here. Just being in the middle of all of this. So it was really intriguing.

Michael: So it sounds like Irish is a bridge between different communities. But I guess it could also be a barrier at some. I guess your father initially experiences this barrier, you won’t give me petrol! So how do you feel about it? Is it a bridge or a barrier to communities?

Chris: Oh, that’s a really good question, isn’t it?

Caragh: I feel like there’s a lot of communities and a lot of different indigenous languages are connecting with the Irish language because they felt the same way. They felt like they had been suppressed for so long and they weren’t able to embrace their culture and their language. It’s probably balanced in that it is respected in that way, but then there are definitely [00:51:00] political views on it from the other side of the community that think, again, that it’s political. 

Chris: Yeah. But that’s, yeah, that’s really frustrating because I think we really enjoy when we hear about people from the other side of the community who have decided to speak Irish.

Caragh: Yep. Linda Ervine is one of those people. She’s a Protestant. She’s recently graduated from Queens University, Belfast, and studied a degree in Irish and she’s now recently just set up an Irish-medium primary school.

Elizabeth: So she’s an educator?

Chris: Yeah. And I’m sure Caragh would love everybody on the island of Ireland to take up Irish and to start speaking it. But I think there are many people from the other side of the community, a lot of Protestants who probably feel maybe a little bit intimidated by the language or a little bit insecure around it, which I suppose you can understand as well. But, the example that we talked about earlier with the Irish language signage, there’s a lot of distrust around it as well. And a lot of people from the other side of the [00:52:00] community would feel that it’s being used as a political tool in some sense, and it then becomes a whole political argument that it takes away from the value of the language, really.

Elizabeth: We have a very contentious landscape here. We have every language in the world is spoken someplace in the US, but there is the English-only movement where schools or public accommodations should not accommodate other languages, other signage. It’s hard. I speak functional Spanish, but I’m not fluent. And it’s intimidating to try and learn another language if you didn’t learn, as you say, as a child. So there is a kind of embarrassment as a monolingual person. You don’t wanna be embarrassed.

Chris: Oh, yeah.

Elizabeth: So you wanna just negate the other experience,

Caragh: I feel I respect both sides of the community and the North, and, everybody’s entitled to their own opinion. But at the end of the day, I think we’re at a stage now in the North where we’re moving forward to a really good [00:53:00] place and everybody should just respect the diverse kind of environment that we’re living in. And every culture and every language should be respected on the island. And I think that’s where we need to get to. And obviously there are certain groups that are against that, but it’s trying to get them to move forward together.

Michael: Learning a language is hard. Yeah. Some people, it’s easy, it seems. Some people can, they can pick it up pretty quickly. I’ve never been good at learning a language.

Okay. So, Chris, let’s shift to sports. Now you’ve worked closely with youth in Northern Ireland and elsewhere through football, i.e., in the US, soccer. Have you seen sports help bridge divides between communities? Can you describe a moment when you that happened?

Chris: Yeah, hugely. I think the team that I played for, that I referred to earlier on was a really good example of that where, again, I’m sure I wasn’t alone in the fact that I hadn’t [00:54:00] been introduced to this other side of the community. And I’m sure there were a lot of boys on the other side that hadn’t been introduced to ours. But within that group, sport just brought us together in a sort of melting pot of different backgrounds and obviously the two different religions coming together.

But I’ve seen that time and time again where sport has brought people together in a really good way and religion and everything else, it all goes out the window. And and even as a schoolboy, I would’ve played for Northern Ireland School Boys Association because I went to my high school in the North of Ireland. And even at that, we talk about our parents being the ones who are really impacted by The Troubles. But then when we would go into the school boys’ group, all the parents would mix in together too. And so you started seeing lots of different ways where there that reconciliation was going on, which is quite good.

Elizabeth: Oh, that’s, yeah, those would have been nice moments to witness.

Chris: Yeah. I don’t think, whether they realized it or not, but their sons were playing football together every week. So [00:55:00] that was enough to bring them together. And even just to have a conversation with one another was probably a lot more than had happened maybe in the last 20, 30 years. So all of that helps.

Michael: So the young athletes that you work with, those that have no memories of The Troubles at all, I mean you so how do they talk about identity and difference and religion and that kind of stuff?

Chris: Yeah, I think, I suppose when I think about that now, football is really helpful in bringing a lot of people together. But I suppose in a sense it does impact how people identify and there are, I suppose, barriers there as well.

So, again, where we’re from, there’s, take the club that I played for example, Cliftonville. Cliftonville would really be seen as a Catholic football club. And there’s Linfield Football Club, for example, which is a really Protestant non-nationalist football club. And so these younger generations that are coming through now, as much as they’re playing football, I’m sure they probably [00:56:00] do have an awareness around how their clubs identify or how supporters for their clubs identify. And there’s a lot of representation in terms of the songs that supporters sing or the flags that they wave. All of those types of things echo what has happened in the past too, which is something I haven’t really thought about before now, but I’m sure even the kids that are growing up have an awareness of the history of the football clubs and their parentage and families and things like that. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but that’s the reality.

Michael: I’m thinking of some of the images of some of the football matches from England, mainly, where the fans would get so out of control. And now you’re telling me they’re Catholic football clubs and Protestant—I assume they play each other. Does that ever, do the games feel more intense?

Chris: Yeah, massively. Massively. And even the boys that you’re talking about growing up, the ones that I would coach, they will have, I don’t know, an understanding of that. If if Cliftonville Football Club are playing against [00:57:00] Linfield, even at under 14 or youth U-16 level, they will understand the significance of that game. And really it’s only significant because of this history that we’re talking about. Again, I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. But that’s the way it is.

The big example would be Celtic Rangers, that’s huge from our part of the world. Rangers is a Protestant football club. And Celtic, Catholic. I don’t really know what I mean when I say it’s a Protestant football club. I suppose the vast majority of the supporter base would be from that community. So Celtic Rangers is a huge one. And yeah, it can get quite close to cross in the line of times in terms of maybe an overeagerness from supporters when they’re following their teams.

Michael: Right, ’cause the football itself remains the same, whether it’s Protestant, the rules are the same. There’s not a long history of, or is there a long history of Catholic football players being better than Protestant?

Elizabeth: Or the referees?

Chris: No, there’s nothing like that. It’s just, it’s just the games can be [00:58:00] more heated, and there’s always the—

Caragh: The chanting.

Chris: Yeah, the chanting, the singing. Maybe some of the emblems that are shown in the stands. Yeah, there’s always just that undercurrent of atmosphere in those games.

Elizabeth: So it sounds like a person is born into a football family. They, whatever your family’s heritage is, you will be a fan of this football team and that one. And maybe a real act of rebellion is to root for some other team. There are baseball families and football families in the US that you dare not root for some other team. 

Michael: So have you had the opportunity to, I assume that there are some football clubs that are both Protestant and Catholic. Bi-religious? Bi-religious football?

Chris: I suppose that it’s less important now.

Michael: It’s less important now. Okay.

Caragh: Cliftonville would be.

Chris: Yeah. I’m not saying the Cliftonville would only have Catholic football players. A lot of the teams, every team will [00:59:00] have a mixture of Catholic and Protestant players playing in their team now. But the supporter bases are predominantly one or the other. Yeah. And that would still be the case.

Michael: So when you’ve worked with these clubs as a coach or maybe seen it as a player, if tension were to arise, but on the team between the Catholics and the Protestants, how would you deal with that at a practical level?

Chris: Yeah, we just we just mixed them in. Mixed them into icebreakers and silly things. And usually very quickly they develop a team spirit and then, so for example, I coached a U-13 national team, so that would’ve been all of the players from all of the clubs coming together. The best players would’ve come together to make this youth international team. And, yeah, at the very beginning they’re very—what’s the word?—Cliquey. With their own teams and maybe a little bit standoffish with the other clubs, especially if those clubs come from Catholic backgrounds and they’re Protestant player, whatever way it is. But you see very quickly [01:00:00] that they just develop a team spirit among the team itself, and you develop exercises to get them to work together on different activities and things. And before long they’re all swimming in the same direction.

Michael: Sports is a great way to bring together people who have historical differences.

Chris: Exactly. Yeah.

Michael: Animosities, even.

Chris: Yeah, definitely. That would be my experience.

Michael: Okay, so you’ve been both a soccer professional and a data analyst. And you recently wrote an article entitled, “League Tables Don’t Lie, But They Don’t Tell the Whole Story: Why xG and Data Matter in the Irish League.” Now, you very modestly asserted people much smarter than me, quote, “people much smarter than me have proven that leveraging data in a way that supports every part of a club’s operation works.” So first of all, what is xG and what [01:01:00] does leveraging data in sports look like?

Chris: Oh, it’s gonna open a can of worms. I’ve had loads of support back home wherein this article, but Caragh ‘s dad messaged me after and said, “I need to go and lie down in a dark room.” But I think, so, yeah, I retired last year from football, from soccer, and wasn’t really sure what to get into next. And I have coached and I felt that is the direction that I was leaning into. And then I just started picking up a few books around data analysis and sport. And I was always very taken with Moneyball, it’s the movie, Brad Pitt’s in it, and it’s about applying data to sport to try and gain an advantage over your competition.

And so xG—football’s been a lot slower to the party than other sports because, partly because it’s so low scoring that it’s difficult to make predictions. And luck plays a bigger [01:02:00] part in football than it does in basketball, baseball. These sports that are far more high scoring, it’s a lot more unlikely that the lesser team will win one of those games than in soccer. Because in soccer what you can do is, if you know you’re playing a team that’s far better than you, you can just defend for the whole game and then maybe try and score a last minute goal, which we see happen quite a lot. That doesn’t really happen in other sports. So that’s where data comes in.

And xG just stands for expected goals. So in the example that I just used, where the lesser team, and sometimes a far lesser team, can be lucky and win a game by defending the whole game and then scoring a last minute goal, that’s really difficult to, if you’re just looking at it from a high level, to say which is the better team? Because if one team wins, we just generally say they were the better team. They have more points on the league table. So we use expected goals, looks at all of the chances that a team had in the [01:03:00] game, and the number of those chances and the quality of those chances. And essentially the people that are backing at say, over the course of a full season or 10 games or 20 games, by looking at that statistic rather than just who won the game, you have a better idea of the highest performing teams. That’s a lot.

Michael: But you expect this data analysis to play a larger role in soccer?

Chris: Yes. That’s it. And it has started to, it has started to play a big role. Even though it was a bit slower to come about than its use in American major sports. But it is making a big dent now and it’s starting to, it’s growing massively even as we speak. Yeah.

Elizabeth: I wanna switch gears and talk to you, Caragh, about your dance career and your history as a dancer. As we mentioned earlier, you were also an accomplished Irish dancer. So can you tell us when you took up dancing?

Caragh: Yeah. I was three when I started dancing. My sister was the same. She [01:04:00] was three when she started. And my mom just brought myself and my sister to our first Irish dance class and we just absolutely loved it. And it just took off from there. But it really helped us in school because we were so dedicated and we worked so hard at it that we actually competed to a very high level. So it meant that we had to get our homework done, really, everything was really well balanced and we had to meet our deadlines because every single day or every other day we were training and practicing.

So we had to make sure that we got on top of all of the work. But it’s afforded me so many opportunities, Irish dancing. Myself and my sister did accomplish a lot over the years. And I traveled with an Irish dancing tour, and we traveled around France, Switzerland, and Germany. And we’ve also performed for a lot of celebrities and at a lot of cool events. So, yeah, it’s been a really cool journey. I’m retired now. I’m 30, but I’ve been retired a very long time and I’m paying for it now. It’s very intense on the legs and [01:05:00] on the feet and the knees I can feel myself crunching as I walk down the stairs, so I don’t think that’s a great sign. But that shows you how intense it is as a sport. We call it a sport because it’s so intense.

Elizabeth: Interesting. From what I’ve seen, it looks like a pretty high impact form of dance, for sure. The shoes that you wear are not soft-soled shoes. It doesn’t sound like.

Caragh: No. Yeah, definitely.

Elizabeth: The sounds of the tapping and the footwork is, yeah. But that’s is a part of the beauty.

Caragh: That’s actually one part of it. Outside of that, it’s, you’re like an athlete, you do so much cardio training and upper core work and other things to support your ability to dance. So there’s a lot more to Irish dancing than what people think if you’re competing at that high level.

Elizabeth: So it, can you talk a little bit about how between Irish dance and touring internationally and the Irish language is, this seems to me to be a larger, a wave of [01:06:00] spreading of Irish culture and Irish identity.

Caragh: Yeah.

Elizabeth: And how have you been received in other places?

Caragh: Yeah. Definitely it’s an expression of identity. Like you’re able to express yourself in a really dynamic and captivating way. As I said before, it’s really intense. There’s a lot of work put into it. But the likes of Michael Flatley, who is American, he put Irish dance on the world stage, and because of shows like his show, he started off in River Dance and then moved to Lord of the Dance. He opened his own show. But because obviously his affiliation with the Irish dance and it’s so rich and it’s so captivating to watch, people just wanted to learn it. So now it’s across the world. And in terms of identity, people are competing. There’s world championships every year, and there’s people from every part of the country and other countries competing at it. So that shows the level of kind of competition that’s involved in it. And it’s just growing year after year. But a lot of the time it’s not about even identity, people just are captivated by watching it [01:07:00] and that’s why they take it up.

Elizabeth: Yeah, it’s just beautiful. A lot of people assume that you can just go and be an actor. It’s just talking. But nobody assumes you can just go and be a dancer and or go and just play soccer. It’s such a highly developed physical sport.

Caragh: I remember every other night coming home when my white socks that I was training in were just completely covered in blood. There’s so much dedication involved in it and so much intensity. So, yeah.

Michael: That’s madness. No, it’s quite the image. Taking off your shoes, there’s all this blood on your feet. Anyway, so traditional Irish dance and storytelling, it is a form of storytelling, right?

Caragh: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. For sure. As I said before, you can express yourself in a certain way. And aside from that. there’s a really rich storytelling aspect in Ireland where there’s a rich literary tradition. So aside from the physical dance in itself and being able to tell story through dance, [01:08:00] storytelling is a huge thing in Ireland. We have a lot of like Celtic myths and legends that have been passed down from generation to generation. As you would say in Irish—

Michael: And you’ve mentioned Kneecap and this part of the revival of Irish culture and language, I assume, too. Is there, are people challenging the traditional dance narratives? Are young people sort of embracing it over the last 20 years? Have you seen that evolve?

Caragh: That’s a good question. The only thing that I’ve really seen in terms of challenging Irish dance is that because it’s got so competitive, there’s a lot more money being spent on Irish dancing now. Everybody wants the sparkliest dress, eerybody wants the whitest socks, the tannest legs. So much money is being spent on this, on each dancer that people are criticizing. Why are we taking away from the traditional Irish physical dance? Why are we adding all of these extra sparkles and features? To keep it simple the way it was at the beginning.

Michael: Interesting. So it’s traditional narrative, but it’s just with [01:09:00] sparkle. Yeah.

Caragh: Yeah. That’s how that’s how it’s evolved. My mum’s—

Elizabeth: A glamorization.

Caragh: My mum and dad spent so much money on us over the years, obviously an investment because we’ve done well, but a lot of money is involved in it. And now, and I actually do feel sorry for children who wanna learn it now because in order for them to be seen or for them to stand out in the stage, they need to look a certain way and there can be issues around that then in terms of body image and that can cause another, that’s another can of worms. 

Chris: It’s massively competitive as well. It’s hugely competitive.

Elizabeth: So that sort of taps into this, what I’m gathering is that the traditional Irish dance and the Irish language were ways of, that they were forms of kind of cultural expression and exuberance that were accessible. They were in these remote parts of the country and they were accessible to the regular person. And it doesn’t, was there any kind of pivot point in how or the commercialization of these forms [01:10:00] has that any relationship to pre-Good Friday Agreement, post-Good Friday Agreement, or is that pivot point more just the commercialization of culture.

Caragh: I think it’s really the commercialization of it. And as it grew as the kind of, as the sport, or as Irish dance grew, it just evolved like that over time. Everybody wanted the best of everything. So again, as I say, yeah, I would say commercialization. Unfortunately.

Elizabeth: Sometimes—not with respect to that, but in other ways—I say, be careful what you wish for. You want this thing to be appreciated, but then it becomes appreciated and it becomes really, yeah.

Chris: Yeah. True.

Elizabeth: So on a different note, speaking of appreciation, Caragh, I wanna ask you about your Fulbright Fellowship and how you came to be teaching Irish at the Catholic University of America’s Irish Studies program.

Caragh: Yeah. I’ve always wanted to do Fulbright, I’ve always wanted to apply for it. It’s a really prestigious award and scholarship between [01:11:00] Ireland and the US, but it was never really the right time for me over the years. I was either graduating and then I wanted to kinda gain some experience in teaching the Irish language. And then after that I wanted to kinda find my permanent job in teaching Irish. So once I found my permanent job, I said to myself, this is the right time to explore and take a career break then and do something different. And that’s what led me then to apply last year to the Fulbright program.

And thankfully, I won the award along with another seven Irish Fulbrights, and they placed me, I didn’t have a, like a choice in where I was placed. They they placed me in the Catholic University of America. And I have never been more thankful and grateful to be placed there. It’s been an amazing experience, surrounded by so many amazing people. I’ve learned so much from the professors in the university in terms of my own teaching practice. And I’ve evolved my own teaching philosophy because of that. And I’m really excited to come home with the wealth of knowledge that I’ve learned here in the States, [01:12:00] in sharing my culture and language and bringing that back home.

Elizabeth: No, that’s great. Chris, you’ve been working here in DC both as a soccer coach and as a data analyst, right? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Chris: I’ve done quite a bit over here. I’ve really loved my experience. I do, I study towards a master’s in business administration over in Alexandria, and I’m a writing coach over there in the university as well, part-time. But then most of my time is taken up by the football. So I coach at Catholic University with the women’s team, which has been great. I coach the DC soccer U-13 boys team and I do some one-to-one coaching as well in the community.

It’s been amazing in that everyone’s been great. And yeah, I think the biggest thing that has come out of it for me is just coming into contact with people from just such different backgrounds, and different cultural backgrounds, different socioeconomic backgrounds. Obviously in the university it’s predominantly an international university, really, a lot of F1 students. Last semester in a group project [01:13:00] around leadership, I was in a group with two Nigerian girls, a Colombian and a guy I think is who was from Egypt or Pakistan. You’re coming into contact with so many different people who I wouldn’t have the opportunity to come into contact with back home. So it’s been great.

Elizabeth: That’s great.

Michael: And you spent most of your time here in dc both of you. Have you been to other parts of the United States and what has that been like?

Caragh: Oh yeah. It’s been amazing. It’s been, I would say it’s definitely been a professional development opportunity for both of us here. But on top of that, traveling experience and life experience. We’ve done so much being here. And we’ve only been here how many years—how many years—how many months now? I’ve been here since August. So we’ve done a lot.

Chris: Yeah, we’ve done a lot. We’ve traveled—when I say traveled, other people probably think we haven’t gone that far, but—

Caragh: For the period of time we’ve been here, while working.

Chris: Yeah, we’ve been to Chicago, New York a couple of times. Been to Boston.

Caragh: Pennsylvania.

Chris: Yeah, Pennsylvania. So not—we’ve been to Canada. We went to Bamf in [01:14:00] Canada.

Elizabeth: Oh. Oh, that’s a ways.

Caragh: It was amazing.

Chris: That is a ways. That’s the outlier. But in the next few weeks we’re hoping to travel down to Charleston, Savannah, Georgia.

Caragh: Georgia, Miami.

Chris: Yeah, potentially Florida. But it’s been great. Each city has their own sort of, their own sort of soul and it’s been brilliant just to be around them for a while.

Michael: Oh and when, this is not meant to be in any kind of grandiose way, but but when you meet Americans, do you ever feel like you’re representing Ireland?

Caragh: Oh, yeah. The whole part of my exchange program is to act as a cultural ambassador for Ireland. Like I’ve been organizing events, Irish events, cultural events, on campus and off campus to share the language and culture. But I’ve just recently organized along with my friend from Dublin, who’s living here at the minute with, I’m working with the EU delegation, we organized Washington DC’s a first ever pop-up Gaeltacht.

Michael: A popup Gaeltacht!

Caragh: Yeah, we should have actually invited you guys. So we had that in in the [01:15:00] city and that was an amazing night. So many people came. I didn’t think, not knowing many people in DC, it was amazing to see so many people come along and just learn some Irish and be immersed in the culture. [To Chris:] It was amazing, wasn’t it?

Chris: Yeah, it was brilliant.

Elizabeth: Have you encountered any misconceptions as you’ve moved around the US or in the city of DC? People go, oh wait—I mean you mentioned earlier that you’ve met a lot of people who have Irish ancestry. Yeah. Are there misconceptions about either the Irish—?

Chris: Yeah, I don’t know. The first thing I’d say, everyone that we’ve met has been really nice and gracious to us. Yeah. But yeah I think in Ireland in recent years, there’s been a boom in terms of education and commerce. A lot of American companies have actually come to Ireland. A lot of the tech companies, Google, Apple, Facebook, a lot of them are setting up bases in Ireland. And I think Ireland in the last number of years has become a real hub in terms of business and education and [01:16:00] science and sort of STEM subjects. But I don’t think that’s what we’re known for. I think when people meet somebody from Ireland, they think a jolly Irish guy, probably think about Guinness and, yeah, unfortunately our connection with drink and alcohol and things like that. So I wouldn’t say it’s a misconception, but I think—

Caragh: Stereotype?

Chris: Yeah. Potentially a little bit of that. Where I think Caragh has done brilliant in providing this view of somebody who has Irish at the heart of everything that they do, and has come over in an educational, sort of cultural exchange program as, hopefully, we’re providing some rationale that we’re known for a little bit more. Hopefully.

Elizabeth: To expand on that, being a native-born American and a sort of student of this country’s culture in my own, in our own right, we do our own deep perusal. But it [01:17:00] seems often that contemporary American culture is very ahistorical. We have a very short attention span in this country. There’s a new cycle that lasts for 24 hours and we’re just moving on to something else. And we’re just a, it’s a new country and we are just very much engaged in the present.

However, though, my perception is that Ireland is this ancient place. It has this ancient culture, ancient language. Is the perception accurate that there is a deep historical consciousness that really is embedded in the consciousness and the culture of the Irish people? Whether it is from The Troubles and the pivot point of the Good Friday Agreement or just deeper history. I’m just wondering if in your communications with non-Irish people, this notion of the historical resonance of the Irish culture, how does that get [01:18:00] communicated?

Chris: I think probably from our perspective, when we think about our history and our ancient history, unfortunately, we always connect that to colonialism and I suppose the oppression that we have felt. But really if you flip it on its head, there are so many other things that we could, think about and celebrate from a historic perspective. But we always talk about for 800 years we’ve been battered down by England and Great Britain. So yeah, we should really not be talking, but we should be talking about our sort of—

Caragh: How far we’ve—

Chris: Yeah, our cultural historical significance and all of the brilliant writers that we have. Carragh’s close with Greg and Julia, people in Catholic University who are so knowledgeable about our history from a cultural and a social perspective and, you know, have read Yeats and—

Caragh: Like the Irish studies program that Professor Gregory Baker leads in Catholic University, it’s [01:19:00] so rich and knowledgeable on, so many different writers and poets.. And I actually, I think that Americans really do respect the Irish people in that sense. And they do look to us with, how do you say, endearment?

Chris: Respect.

Caragh: And respect. And I think that’s a really amazing thing, that we have such a strong relationship with the US and I think that’s important to talk about and uphold to keep that connection going. And again, as I say, the US were involved in our peace process.

Elizabeth: Sure. We’re old enough to remember JFK as the first Catholic president of the United States, and my understanding was that the people of Ireland were just over the moon having JFK, John F. Kennedy, as the American president.

Chris: I’m sure. I’m sure. Every time an American president comes over it’s a big deal. I think Obama had some connection even it was like a—

Caragh: A petrol station named after Obama.

Chris: Obama and [01:20:00] Biden has, he has very clear ancestry in the west of Ireland, too.

Elizabeth: Yeah. I don’t know everyone’s genetic history, but yeah—

Caragh: Nearly everyone. I think it’s I think it’s actually something like half of the presidents or something like. I was reading something about, something mad, that there’s an ancestry there.

Michael: So one of the quotes that this Creativists in Dialogue podcast was formed around was by Frantz Fanon, “In the world through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself.” We select that because it’s the process of creating your identity, who you are, your relationships, your future, it’s just an endless process. And and you’ve talked a lot about growing up the last 20, 30 years in post-Troubles Ireland, so could you maybe just reflect a little bit on just how that has shaped you, you’ve addressed it already in some sense, but I was just [01:21:00] giving you a final chance to talk about it.

Chris: I’ve loved this year because we’ve just been embedded in this community. And we have been very lucky with our landlady Jackie, who—

Caragh: Jackie Young

Chris: Jackie Young. Young, yes.

Caragh: Give her a shout out.

Elizabeth: And she has Irish history herself. Heritage.

Chris: Yeah. So Jackie will—

Caragh: I call her my American, my second mom. She’s my American mom. Yeah.

Chris: But Jackie will encourage us as much as possible to—

Caragh: come out of our comfort zone.

Chris: Yeah. Push ourselves in the sort of potentially uncomfortable scenarios and meet other people and try and get involved in the community. And we’ve done loads. We’ve almost created our own little community here and we have our own sort of circles of friends here now, which we could never have imagined a year ago. So it’s been amazing just to become part of the community. We like to go down to the farmer’s market every Saturday and things like that. We’ll miss so much about—

Caragh: The community has been amazing. We’ve loved every minute of it.

Chris: Yeah. The neighbors have been brilliant.

Caragh: We’ve just kinda threw ourselves into the community. Chris actually does a lot of volunteering which is, we’ve met so many people through [01:22:00] that, with football and me organizing events and so on. And I think that’s actually opened us, opened our minds up to so many different things. And we’ve learned so many things from people and, yeah, we’ve just, we’ve had an amazing time.

Elizabeth: I wanna give a little shout out to the Brookland neighborhood in Northeast DC where you all have bene living.

Chris: Definitely, yeah.

Elizabeth: Where we live also, which is for folks who don’t know DC, it’s east of the park and it’s in Northeast DC. We’re about, oh, five miles to north of the Capitol building. So, go Brookland. There are lots of Catholic institutions in this neighborhood. It’s a very lush green place.

Anyway, we’d love to finish our conversations with our interviewees by asking each of you for some tangible, practical advice you would give to our listeners, is there a little nugget of advice you could share with our listeners about how to continue to nurture their own creative and creative selves and their sense of identity?

Caragh: I would say really just embrace your [01:23:00] heritage. Explore your deep roots and that helps you with connecting yourself to your own identity and exploring that and embracing that. But also I think what’s really important for me was embracing or expressing myself through the arts. So definitely just throw yourself into something expressive to get to meet new people, to open your mind up to different perspectives, different cultures. And, yeah, just stay curious and learn from others. And I think that’s really important in terms of life experience and becoming a better person as well.

Chris: Yeah, I think I’d just say, just do something different. Do something that’s uncomfortable. We can, I think we just got caught up with thinking the sort of grind at home.

Caragh: The nine to five.

Chris: The nine to five. Yeah. Back in Ireland. So I was just ready to get out and do some, go traveling and meet new people and explore different cities. And it’s been the best experience of my life. And going back to the previous question, I’ve learned so much more about myself in the last 12 months than maybe 10 years before that. [01:24:00] Because you do get caught up in the nine to five depending on what you—

Caragh: Paying the bills.

Chris: Paying the bills, paying the mortgage.

Caragh: But even, I would even say I’m a different person now after this year. Yeah. I have classed myself as a homebird. I never really traveled—I did travel, but I wouldn’t have went to a particular place and lived there for a certain amount of time. So I’m 30 now and I’m only doing this now, and I regret not doing it earlier on, but I’m just so grateful that I have just pushed myself outta my comfort zone. And again, as I say, I’ve gained more confidence because of that. And I think you can say the same.

Elizabeth: I don’t think I know where you live in Ireland.

Chris: Oh, Belfast.

Caragh: Belfast. Yeah, I’m West Belfast and he’s from Cavan.

Chris: Yeah, but we live in Belfast.

Caragh: Oh, sorry. Together. Yeah.

Chris: We both live in, technically, Lisburn, it’s like a, it could be it’s its own city, I think technically, but it’s almost like a suburb of Belfast.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Our very last question is what’s next for both of you? Obviously you’re going back home, but are there web pages or [01:25:00] other links that our listeners could go to learn a little bit more about you?

Caragh: What’s next? We will be traveling for the next couple of weeks. And then we’ll be returning to Ireland and just getting back into the groove of things. I’ll go back to not the grind, with a different perspective now. My career break will end in in August. So I’ll go back teaching in my favorite place which is St. Dominic’s Grammar School on the Falls Road. And I’ll go back teaching there for the foreseeable and can’t wait to bring all the experience that I’ve learned here back to the students at home and hopefully inspire those girls—it’s an all-girls school—and inspire those girls to understand the opportunities that they have if they learn Irish, and that it’s brought me across the water to the States. teaching at the university level. So I’m excited to do that.

Chris: I go back to my job. I’ve taken a 12 month sabbatical to come here, so I’ll go back to that job. But yeah, [01:26:00] I’m in talks with them at the moment, actually, about coming down to four days instead of five. That will make it the groove. But no, in all seriousness, I’ve loved this year so much and I’ve started to pick up so many different things and explore different things that I want to keep—

Caragh: xG.

Chris: Yeah, xG being one of them. And I want to try and continue to do that, so I want time back to be able to do it. So we’ll see what happens.

Caragh: But we’ll be going home and my sister is expecting it at the end of July. So that’s, we’re excited. We’re excited for that. All good things coming.

Elizabeth: Absolutely. This has been fantastic. Thank you both so much for really, so generously sharing time and expertise with us. It’s just been a delightful conversation.

Caragh: We really enjoyed it. And thanks so much for your company.

Chris: Thank you.

Caragh: You’re doing great things.

Elizabeth: How do you say, “See you soon.” “See you next time.”, “Slán go fóill

Caragh: Oh, yes. Just, “Slán go fóill.” Slán go fóill. And “Slán agat.”

Elizabeth: Slán go fóill. And thank you all for listening. This is Creativists in [01:27:00] Dialogue.

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Tremendous thanks to all our listeners. 

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Special shoutout to Creativists in Dialogue’s production team: Audio engineer Elliot Lanes and transcription editor Morgan Musselman. Thank you, all. 

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The Creativists in Dialogue podcast is supported in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and subscribers like you. The Theatre in Community podcast series is supported in part by Humanities DC. Thanks.

[END OF PART 2]