“While We Have a Shared Past, We Do Not Have a Shared Memory”

In 2023, political leaders, museum curators, and documentary filmmakers marked the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement’s twenty-fifth anniversary. They hailed the Agreement as a historic watershed for peace in Northern Ireland but also diagnosed a faltering subsequent peace process. Their visions for reviving that process differed. Elite commemorations promoted an agreed memory of 1998 as a perennial testament to intercommunal compromise. By contrast, commemorative exhibitions and broadcast media deliberately amplified the conflict’s contested memory. This article analyzes how these contrasting commemorative practices proposed to reinvigorate Northern Ireland’s stalling peace process. First, it differentiates how elite politicians and public history practitioners marked the anniversary. The article proceeds to examine how curators and broadcasters amplified Northern Ireland’s disagreed past to reimagine its future democratic renewal.