Thomas Devlin memorial project

Belfast Flags of Hope

In August 2005 Thomas Devlin was returning home from the shop with some friends when he and his friends were attacked by a number of men. As Thomas tried to escape by climbing over the railings into Saint Patrick’s College Bearnageeha, he was fatally stabbed.

Initially the Devlin family spoke about the possibilities of creating a piece of wall mounted artwork to be located on a gable of the school. We had several discussions about this.

After a number of ideas were considered we settled on two approaches to the memorial project. One is to develop the Belfast Flags of Hope; a project that will attempt to re-imagine attitudes towards flag flying amongst our young people.

This short illustrated publication is produced to ensure that a record of the Belfast Flags event lives beyond 2009. This publication will discuss the actual hands-on production process of the project and depict a large sample of the flags produced.

In these pages we hope to provide the essence of the project. We also hope to provide a blueprint for other schools and groups to follow in the future. This account of the Belfast Flags project is intended for use in schools, community centres and groups everywhere, at home and perhaps abroad. The goal being an ambitious attempt to grow the project beyond the pilot project of summer 2009.

This report will allow people, teachers, politicians, community groups and the general public to see how the Flags project happened and what it is about. The Belfast Flags publication is both a record of the event and a toolkit.

You can now download a copy of this project in PDF format. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed to be able to view it.