Over 30 events are planned across the Derry City and Strabane District as part of this year’s Community Relations and Culture Awareness Week between 18th and 24th September. The aim of the Northern Ireland wide initiative is to engage with the public and urge them to consider and embrace the growing cultural diversity that exists in our local community.

The UK must embrace culture at a time when working together is “more necessary and more urgent than ever”, the BBC’s director-general has said, as he launched a UK-wide creative partnership. As he announced Culture UK with the arts councils of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Lord Tony Hall called for Britain to become the world’s most “culturally engaged and creative country, where everybody, wherever they come from, can take part”.

Young people and youth leaders in Derry have taken part in an innovative cultural arts project which deals with the human stories behind the transition of Northern Ireland’s police force from RUC to PSNI.

Gary Hart has become the latest in a line of U.S. Senators and diplomats to wend their way to Northern Ireland to serve in the role of adviser, negotiator, and conscience-in-chief to the political process in Stormont.