Travelling into the Future: Contemporary Irish Traveller Narrative and Transmedia

This essay examines the use of transmedia and digital media in contemporary Irish Traveller narrative and shared lived experience. In the 2022 Arte TV programme Re: Irish Travellers, A Minority in Danger, Traveller Ned Stoke states, ‘I’m happy the way that I am, and I shouldn’t have to change to suit everyone else. The pressure that's been put on for to change people is making our way of life disappear. Pressure from other people that can’t understand what's going on can’t appreciate what's going on… but we’re not trying to change them’. Known as the Mincéirí, the Pavee, or an lucht siúil, the history of Ireland's indigenous minority has often formerly been narrated by heteronormative voices outside of their own communities. Despite the challenges of historical marginalisation and discrimination, Irish Traveller culture and history is currently experiencing a flourishing of oral, visual, and photojournalistic contribution from a diverse range of Travellers that challenge preconceived notions and outdated stereotypes. Traveller and activist Oein DeBhairduin demonstrates these intersections through his podcasts and interviews focused on traditional Traveller oral tales and language, which are sensitive to contemporary concerns such as social justice and sustainability. Likewise, Martin Beanz Warde explores the diversity of contemporary Traveller life in his photojournalism project and in his play, ‘The Dead House’, both of which shun purely text-based forms in order to offer a more complex view of the contemporary Traveller experience. Traveller culture is neither a fad nor a cultural box to tick, and new Traveller content creators such as Helena Lvs Martin Ward are unafraid to explore the prescribed notions and embedded narratives of what settled people think they know about contemporary Irish Traveller life, in order to offer more accurate representations of her own lived experience. In actively embracing social/digital media and transmedia, Travellers create new legacies that both complicate and innovate contemporary understandings of Irishness ‘beyond the text.’