The Rainbow Project aim to make Irish more accessible with Derry immersion day

The day-long event saw members of the LGBTQIA+ community partake in an Irish language taster class, a storytelling session on queer Irish legends and arts and crafts workshops, which were all led by queer facilitators.

James McGoldrick, Regional Health and Wellbeing Officer at The Rainbow Project said: “This day came about as a way to help make the Irish language and culture more inclusive for queer people. The intention was just to break down some of the barriers that some people have. Queer people have a lot of barriers to access in different communities and groups, because of the intolerances that we might face. My personal experience is that Irish language and culture has been very actively inclusive but for a lot of queer people outside looking in, there's that worry that it may not be. So, hopefully this will give people the space to have that first step to be comfortable going out and pursuing this further.

"Another big aspect for us was to help make Irish language culture more inclusive to non-native people. In our service, we have a lot of migrants and refugees and people who move here from different parts of the UK. We wanted to create a space where people can access this culture in Northern Ireland. We know the language can be very political but we want to show that it's something that is so inclusive and it's a space where people can come to enjoy things and even bring aspects of their own culture, too. We may have our different backgrounds, different nationalities or different ethnicities, but we're all human and it's something that we all celebrate."

As well as language and storytelling classes, participants also decorated plant pots, in which they planted native plants, before creating a cross-stitch panel.

“It is a bit corny, but the plant potting is to show that you're here at the beginning of your Irish language journey, and your language skills with grow with the plant,” James said. “After the plant potting, we finished up with a cross stitch workshop. The intent is that everyone creates their own cross stitch panel with what they've learned about Irish culture or something they’ll be taking away from the day, as well as adding something of their own personal culture, even if they are native Irish. We plan to stitch them all together into one big tapestry in the future, which can grow over time, adding others to it in the future and it will tell the story of sharing cultures.

"We hope that this may be something that we can repeat again in the future. August is Lúnasa, one of the four Gaelic pagan holidays. In Derry, there's something that happens in the city for three of the four festivals so, potentially, this could become the city’s official Lúnasa celebrations in the future.”

For more information on the work done by The Rainbow Project, visit www.rainbow-project.org or follow them on social media.