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Introducing UCDCP

This project has been designed as a cross-disciplinary, cross-sector collaborative effort, with Archaeology as its lead discipline, to address an important issue in contemporary Ireland. Taking Dublin as its case-study, it is built on the premise that critical cultural data on two urban communities with divergent historical trajectories – traditional working class communities, which are in decline, and immigrant communities, which are expanding – are in danger of being lost in the space between the energetic economic development of the urban landscape on the one hand, and Archaeology’s preoccupation with past lives on the other. We assert that, even though ‘heritage’ is traditionally a white, middle-class, concept, these communities self-evidently possess heritages within the cityscape, and are also actively creating heritages for future generations. Believing that ‘cultural identity’ is constructed spatially and materially, we assert the importance of the study of the territoriality and materiality of these communities, and we assert that Archaeology is uniquely equipped to be the principal discipline in such research.

As Ireland moves into its second decade of net in-migration, the focus of public and policy debates have turned towards issues of integration. Reflective dialogue about the meanings of the national past and their implications for understanding contemporary Irishness are crucial for responding to the question, ‘integration into what?’. Current political and civic approaches to consultation, interculturalism and social inclusion, however, have failed to effectively stimulate this discussion. Our project has the distinction of stakeholder participation and co-ownership: we conceive of a genuine Public Archaeology, in which identifications, valuations and representations of the archaeological resource are elements of an ongoing dialogue – one that underpins the evolving cultural diversity that has now become Ireland’s future. Moreover, it is appropriate that such dialogue begins in 2008, the European Union Year of Inter-Cultural Dialogue.