The Titanic Quarter – Rebirth for Sailortown
The video I chose this month for the blog is one person’s view on Sailortown or what we are now calling the Titanic Quarter. You can find other video throughout the site with new perspectives on Northern Ireland through Richard Bangs accounts in travel. While I have been traveling to the North for 14 years, working on genealogy and finding my way around the place in all its beauty, I have seen changes that were never once thought possible. In the short time I’ve been showing people in the North, I have been very proud in the fact that I could call it some of my ancestor’s home and part of it spoke to me and has left an indelible mark upon the framework in which I call my sense of place. Remember, we create, we can envision a new future and it’s part of what Belfast has grabbed hold of in recent years, not to mention the great city of Derry.
The video by Northern Visions TV and Del Halligan is testimony to what has transpired in the area in the short amount of time of two years. And while the mourning of loss is felt in a community that once was, the new community is thriving with an influx of visitors and giving Belfast something once again for that area, to be proud of in building together. They worked together as a community to create that sense of place, so that it wasn’t lost. While building “up” is a sign of our times, the altruistic vision is there and one worth seeing and experiencing.
When I was in Belfast in April, the Titanic building was fantastical. We held our meetings there for the tourism trade and we explored the great city of Belfast, again. A place I never get tired of and that has it’s own feel and it’s own history. We had the Belfast Gospel choir sing for us on the steps of the staircase that was an exact replica of the Titanic’s and the words that still fill my mind and heart is the song called “Something Inside So Strong” because it takes that inner fortitude for a community and indeed a person to survive the times and make those changes that bring growth.
Rebirth… Growth… Creating that Sense of Place by learning from the past, incorporating it and being true to that vison, whatever it is for you, it that thing that is taking us all as a community, be it our local or international, to the next level. One where we all thrive.
Ginger Aarons
Ginger is the founder of Time Travel, LLC … often called Time Travel Tours. She offers bespoke travel to Ireland & The British Isles. Also offering personal, bespoke requests for family genealogies. Passionate about what she does by offering a way to learn while you travel, introducing the best of the best in Ireland in what they do, offer and teach with common philosophies, ethics and goals for the world. She is also a travel and foodie writer for several magazines and online magazines. Often referred to as the one that knows everyone, she is a connector and one that is always making a connection for someone, because to her, that is what it’s all about.
Originally from South of the Mason-Dixon Line, and after 30 years, she has become an all-around Portland girl that loves the fact that she gets to live and work in two of the best places in the world, the Pacific Northwest and Ireland … what could possibly be better?
Lover of music (it DOES make the world go ’round.. not money), a supporter of the arts, do-gooder, Masterpiece Theater watcher since the age of 12, a supporter of the historic house, genealogy nut, and avid antique collector..
