Museum of Free Derry

– the civil rights era of the 1960s and the Free Derry/early troubles era of the 1970s. We intend to open the first phase of this museum – the Museum of Free Derry – in Summer 2006. (A temporary Bloody Sunday Centre will be open in Glenfada Park until the museum opens.) The archive will be known as the National Civil Rights Archive.

For the purposes of the museum, a loose definition of Free Derry has been used, and the term is used to describe the area covering the Bogside, Brandywell, Creggan, Bishop Street and Foyle Road, an area roughly equivalent to the old, gerrymandered South Ward.

Phase One of the Museum of Free Derry will cover the following areas: • The history of the Free Derry area -– the Bogside, Brandywell, Bishop Street and Creggan.
• Stormont, the Corporation and the South Ward, 1920s -– 1960s, creating the conditions for conflict.
• The revitalisation of local community spirit and self-help in the mid-1960s.
• Onto the Streets -– October 1968 to July 1969.
• Battle of the Bogside.
• Internment and Free Derry.
• Bloody Sunday.
• Motorman and the invasion of Free Derry.

As the museum develops, this narrative will be expanded to cover events right up to the present day.

The Museum of Free Derry will tell this part of the city’s history from the point of view of the people who lived through, and were most affected by, these events: it will be the community’s story told from the community’s perspective, not the distorted version parroted by the government and most of the media over the years.