Guestbook Project celebrated its 10th anniversary on December 3, 2018, at an event at Boston College’s Connolly House, kindly sponsored by the Center for Irish Studies.

The event also marked the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, the historical moment when peace became a reality in troubled Ireland. To mark this date, Guestbook Director Richard Kearney spoke of the creative collaboration between our digital peace pedagogy and that of the Nerve Center in Northern Ireland dedicated to the Irish-British project of “teaching divided history”. He  introduced  a screening of the jointly-produced film, In Peace Apart, which features a Catholic and a Protestant student from Derry/Londonderry exchanging stories and uniforms in the historically divided city. The video has received almost fifty thousand hits and triggered wide press coverage in the British and Irish media (the Guardian, Belfast Telegraph, etc.) since its release.

The narrative exchange is part of Guestbook Project’s ongoing peace mission: to create “classrooms without walls” around the world where conflict is addressed through the sharing of stories and fostering of empathy. The reception was attended by prominent Boston academics and  journalists from WGBH and the Boston Globe as well as by the Irish Consul and the Deputy for Public Affairs at the British Consulate-General.

The President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, sent a congratulatory message that was read during the event. In his words, “I am heartened to see that the Guestbook Project’s approach of enabling young people in divided communities to share their perspectives has grown over the last decade from addressing the particularly Irish experience to those of over a dozen divided communities around the globe. (…) I would like to congratulate those who have contributed to this valuable initiative.” The Reception also recalled the warm endorsement by Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, who wrote: “I salute – nay admire – your vision and energy in organizing [Guestbook’s] “Hosting the Stranger”, both as an intellectual venture and an administered programme.”

The Press Reception concluded with a presentation and screening of Guestbook Project’s new documentary Sheltering Strangers in the presence of its director Angelos Bougas, a film which tells the story of an Afghan refugee who escaped the Taliban and is hosted on a Greek Island with other young refugees displaced by war.

At a time when borders across the globe have become occasions of fierce contestation (from Northern Ireland and the Balkans, to Mexico/US and the Middle East), the Guestbook Project continues its mission of engaging and educating for peace by “Exchanging Stories” across divides.