Please join us at patreon.com/tortoiseshackThe lads did their second live show as part of the Imagine! Festival of Ideas and Politics at Belfast’s Crescent Arts Centre.
We were joined by a panel of three previous guests representing alternative voices from within the broad spectrum of loyalism.
Beano Niblock is a former loyalist prisoner and the writer of the acclaimed play The Man Who Swallowed A Dictionary (2023) about the life of his former comrade David Ervine. Niblock is a vocal advocate for loyalist storytelling and the power of arts as means of communicating historical experience.
Emma Shaw is the founder and CEO of the Phoenix Education Centre, a profit for purpose community interest company in East Belfast that nurtures community self-help and promotes strategies to tackle low educational attainment and barriers to the workforce.
David Adams is a former spokesperson and councillor for the UDA-linked Ulster Democratic Party who was heavily involved in negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement. Having experienced what he described as a ‘messy divorce’ from loyalism in the mid-00s, he has spoken openly about the need to have informed conversations about reconciliation as a priority in any debates over the constitution.
The Shamim Malekmian immigration reporting interview is out now here:
Podcast (shrapnel): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:30 — 48.3MB) | Embed
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