NVTV launches new season of Ulster-Scots programming
Date Posted: January 25, 2023
Northern Visions today announces a new 12-week series of Ulster Scots programmes commencing Wednesday 25th January on NVTV. Produced by Northern Visions with support from Northern Ireland Screen’s Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund, programming includes a range of documentaries, interviews and short films focusing on literature, events, places and people with a distinct Ulster-Scots theme.
Among the highlights is Forest Folk, a documentary exploring the crucial role that woodlands have played in the history, economy and ecology of Northern Ireland and southwest Scotland, and the stories and ideas that are embedded in Ulster Scots culture.
From the early 1990s the community of Ballycarry celebrated music poetry and history and its Ulster-Scots heritage through The Broadisland Gathering. This programme explores its twenty-five-year history and the volunteers who ran the oldest Ulster-Scots festival in Northern Ireland. The festival included pipe bands, drum major displays, musical groups, singers, storytelling and poetry, exhibitions, vintage vehicles, re-enactors, village fair, children’s entertainments, a pageant parade, pet show, history walks and concerts and attracted upwards of 6,000 people.
In the late 18th and early 19th century a group of poets emerged in Ireland. Mostly working class and from the linen industry, they wrote about their lives through poetry, often guided by the rhythm of the loom as they produced their linen. Influenced by contemporaries such as Robert Burns, many of the poems were written in the common tongue of the time, Ulster-Scots, and they would come to be known as the Rhyming Weavers or Weaver Poets. A Mighty Mallet is an eight part series exploring the lives and works of the poets including James Orr, Samuel Thompson and Sarah Leech from Co Donegal, the only known female Irish weaver poet.
And finally Ever Hantin Echas is a series of short films exploring Ulster-Scots through historical objects and the stories behind them. Working with the Public Records of Northern Ireland the six-part series brings you up close to tales of spies, double crosses, poisonings… and a recently restored previously unseen map.
NVTV’s Dean Hagan said, “I am delighted to present this slate of programmes that explore just how Ulster-Scots heritage, culture, commerce and language have defined Northern Ireland as we know it, right down to the very roots of the ancient oak trees still living below the pine forests of today.”
Northern Ireland Screen’s Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund Executive, Heidi McAlpin added, “Over the past year NVTV has produced a vast array of engaging and informative Ulster-Scots content, from news items to studio interviews, short series to feature documentaries. Having everything available on-demand as well as via NVTV’s broadcast channels makes these stories accessible globally as well as locally, and we look forward to further developing this international reach.”
NVTV broadcasts on Freeview 7 across Greater Belfast and Virgin Media 159 across Northern Ireland. All programmes will also be available online at www.nvtv.co.uk.
