Foreword
In 2017 Caitriona Cunningham, a mother and baby home survivor from Derry, wrote one scene of a play as part of a drama course in a local theatre — about her lived experience in Newry’s Marianvale institution back in 1980. It was something she had been very ashamed of and had kept hidden from others for over 40 years.
Caitriona brought that scene to a Sole Purpose Productions Theatre Lab, to work on the idea with actors and other writers. It was the beginning of a long development process that would lead to the sell-out Northern Ireland tour of her play ‘The Marian Hotel’ in 2024.
Her work is a lasting record of the terrible practices in Northern Ireland institutions in the twentieth century.
As part of the tour, Sole Purpose made a call for other survivors to come forward, to take part in a major creative heritage project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, building on previous work by Sole Purpose in The Sunflower Project. Participants from all over the north came together to explore their memories in creative writing workshops facilitated by Aoibh Johnson and supported by WAVE Trauma Centre. They recorded oral histories of their experiences, and selected photographs and other artefacts to go with them.
Their work is presented in this new digital exhibition, which tells the story of Northern Ireland mother and baby homes by drawing from all their experiences. It is a place where the public can learn more about this heritage, where we can recognise and celebrate the importance of these women’s stories as a piece of Northern Irish history. Most of all, we hope that through this exhibition we can share their powerful message with other survivors:
There is no shame and you are not alone.
