National Treasures, starting on Sunday night on RTÉ One at 6.30pm, is the culmination of an all-island crowd-sourced archive project that gathers together a unique collection of cherished everyday objects with big stories to tell – all of which have been preserved in attics and under beds by ordinary people across Ireland.
The series follows our specialist curators as they travel to the four corners of Ireland in search of those objects that help define us as a people and mark the significant moments in the social, political and cultural development of the island over the past century. The items uncovered by theproject range from a plectrum from the late Rory Gallagher’s last ever gig and a women’s voting slip from 1918 to a piece of the first ever airplane to complete a transatlantic flight and rubber bullets used during the Troubles.
National Treasures, a joint project between RTÉ, the BAI and the National Museum of Ireland, and produced by EZ Films (Man on Bridge), is a four-part television series and ongoing digital archive with an exhibition and book to follow.
The series, presented by John Creedon, kicks off this weekend with the Cork roadshow throwing up plenty of surprises including the proud father of one of Ireland’s biggest sporting heroes; and a poster advertising Dublin’s first gay nightclub.
CLIP: A poster for Ireland’s first gay nightclub https://youtu.be/OLkS76j62hg
Sarah Ryder, RTÉ Executive Producer for Arts said: “We all know the official story of Ireland overthe past 100 years, but what National Treasures set out to uncover was the human story of thepast century, through the much-loved objects of ordinary citizens, right across the island of Ireland. From Sonia O’Sullivan’s running shoes to a rubber bullet fired at schoolchildren in Belfast; from banknotes from the Limerick Soviet protest of 1919 to posters advertising Dublin’s first gay nightclub, this crowd-sourced history project has revealed a very different story of Ireland. Thanks to the thousands of people who submitted objects online and came to the roadshows to sharetheir personal treasures and stories, the National Treasures digital archive is growing at a pace we could not have anticipated – and, we hope, will become a valuable source of information about our times for future generations.”
The four roadshows held in Cork, Belfast, Dublin and Galway, saw people come from all over Ireland keen to have their item included in the National Treasures – A People’s Archive exhibition to launch in the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life in Castlebar, Co Mayo, on April 24th.The National Treasures curators – Roisín Higgins, Richard McElligott, Donal Fallon, Ruth Griffin and Linda King – have assessed hundreds of items, selecting the most relevant and insightful to be part of the exhibition.
Raghnall Ó Floinn, Director of the National Museum of Ireland said: “I am delighted that theNational Museum of Ireland has been able to partner with RTÉ and the BAI to bring such a fascinating project to life. As the custodian of Ireland’s portable material heritage, the role of theNational Museum of Ireland is to tell the story of the island of Ireland through the objects in our national collections. National Treasures follows in this vein – creating a peoples’ archive by reaching out and asking the public to share their important and cherished objects that tell an interesting story or provide new insight into our recent past”.
Tony Candon, Manager Keeper of the Museum of Country Life, said: “I am really pleased National Treasures is airing on RTÉ One. The National Museum of Ireland – Country Life has worked closely in the background with EZ Films, the producers of the series, over the last couple of years. Just as the Museum of Country Life collects and displays the objects of everyday life from rural Ireland in the century or so between the 1850s and the 1950s, National Treasures has brought to light objects from ordinary people that illustrate aspects of life in the last 100 years.”
National Treasures starts this Sunday on RTÉ One at 6.30pm.