City of Culture and Londonderry-India science link-up amongst British Council achievements

TWO bosses of a leading UK international cultural relations body claim it has been very active in supporting Londonderry's UK City of Culture bid and that it has funded a pioneering computer science collaboration involving researchers in India and the North West.
By The Newsroom
Published 6th Jan 2011, 09:06 BST

Two representatives of the British Council organisation attended a meeting of the Stormont Committee for the office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister and outlined what they were doing to forge cultural links between here and other parts of the world.

The British Council is billed as "a major asset for the UK, making a powerful contribution to our international standing as an open, internationally engaged and influential country."

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Its purpose is to create international opportunities for and trust between the people of the UK and other countries worldwide.

British Council Director in Northern Ireland Shona McCarthy told the Committee its work on the Londonderry 2013 culture bid was one of its areas of work.

She stated: "We are very active in supporting Derry/Londonderry's city of culture ambitions for 2013. We are the lead partner in supporting the international aspirations for that year.

"We have started that process already by giving a kind of deliberate discrimination towards the city by hosting events there such as our annual lecture series, at which Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty and human rights expert, delivered a lecture last year.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

"This year, Ben Hammersley, who is the editor of 'Wired' magazine, will lead a lecture on the digital world and new media and the opportunities that that offers for working in the city."

Ms McCarthy's colleague Mr Colm McGivern Head of the Council's UK Directorate also told Committee members of a unique collaboration between computer science researchers based in Londonderry and their counterparts at an institution in India.

He advised: "We also funded specific programmes of connection between the two regions. For instance, the University of Ulster is involved with an Indian institution on a particular technical collaboration in its computer science division, which is based in Derry.

"So, there have been some deeply important collaborative opportunities between the two."

Related topics:IndiaNorth West