Shared Home Place

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has launched a new dialogue phase of the Shared Island Initiative called Shared Home Place. This is a participative initiative, in the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, that invites people across the island - and beyond - to explore, through a heritage and culture lens, the question: What does a Shared Home Place mean to you - past, present, and future?

The programme is shaped by three core themes and five work strands. The three themes are:

Explore: Exploring what a Shared Home Place means past, present and future, recognising the diversity and complexity of identities and traditions across the island of Ireland.

Connect: Connecting people across the island of Ireland and beyond through dialogue and engagement on place-based community, culture and heritage.

Share: Sharing the experiences, culture and heritage, past and present, that make us who we are today and reflecting, in the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, on their place in our shared future on this island.

The five strands are:

Strand 1: Built Heritage

Built Heritage encompasses the buildings, infrastructure, architecture and heritage sites that make up our built environment. From historic towns, bridges and buildings across the centuries, to contemporary architecture, and from harbours and houses to stone walls and other vernacular traditions, our built environment helps define the character of a place and can connect us to other places across the island of Ireland and beyond.

Strand 2: Landscape and Languages

Language and Landscape entwine to shape our sense of home place, as expressed in the Irish phrase ‘dinnseanchas’. This strand engages with the languages and dialects spoken across this island, including the English language, the Irish language, Ulster-Scots and Gammon / Cant and will explore how our oral traditions, place names and local expressions, rooted in language and lore, record how people have lived in and experienced landscape over time. This strand will also explore the role of our natural landscape and the impact of weather, climate and biodiversity in shaping the identity of communities and places.

Strand 3: Cultural Heritage

The Cultural Heritage strand engages with the island’s rich and ever-evolving creativity in arts, craft, design, music, literature, as well as food, folklore, language, sport and local traditions, combining to create a sense of home place and connection to one another across the island of Ireland and beyond.

Strand 4: Lives and Livelihoods

Lives and Livelihoods explores the lives of people who have shaped the island as a shared home place, including the experiences of ordinary people over generations. It reflects on economic, industrial and working traditions, as well as the social changes, histories and experiences that have influenced identities, cultures and communities, both past and present. This strand also encompasses common economic and social histories - such as market towns, mining areas, fishing villages, farming communities, and manufacturing centres - as well as life experiences, including of work, education, religion, family, and death.

Strand 5: Ireland and the World

Ireland and the World invites the island’s diaspora to explore what a shared home place means to them and for the island of Ireland, past, present and future. This strand also includes reflection on the experiences and traditions from other countries and cultures that Ireland’s new communities have brought to the island and to the concept of a shared home place. The connections over time between trends and events on the island and those in Britain, Europe, North America and elsewhere will be explored as part of this strand.

Shared Home Place Delivery

The Government has announced five initial components of the Programme to be delivered between 2026 and 2030:

• Heritage: The Heritage Council will lead a €5 million programme promoting public engagement with Shared Home Place themes. This will include programming delivered through local libraries, museums, archives, and galleries, as well as the creation of an all-island Local Government Heritage Network to support collaboration and knowledge-sharing.
• Diaspora: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade will develop a dedicated diaspora strand as part of the Government’s new Diaspora Strategy. This will invite the global Irish community to actively participate in the conversation about what a Shared Home Place means.
• National Cultural Institutions: Ireland’s National Cultural Institutions will be able to bring forward proposals aligned with the aims of Shared Home Place, working with partners in Northern Ireland under the Shared Island Cultural Cooperation Scheme.
• Intangible Cultural Heritage: Managed by the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, this work will support the exploration of North/South and East/West cultural connections between 2027 and 2030, including in the context of the UK’s ratification of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage and the development of new inventories in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England.
• Home Place Talks: A series of public talks and discussions to frame and facilitate dialogue across the island, with more information to be made available soon.

In addition to the above:

• Phase 2 of the Creative Ireland Shared Island Programme includes a focus on encouraging local authority and community-led projects to explore Shared Home Place themes under the Creative Communities and Creative Youth Nurture Fund calls, which are currently open for applications.
• The Shared Island Media initiative, led by Coimisiún na Meán, has a new Shared Island Sound & Vision strand, which will include options for programming and productions in response to the Shared Home Place initiative.