The Bank of Hands Up
By Nick Bilbrough
As well as in Bristol and Totnes, we now have our very own space in Ireland!
And thanks to my old friends Insaf and Omar it’s in their home town Ballinrobe in County Mayo, Ireland. They’ve taken a huge leap of faith and are renting the old disused Ulster Bank, and gradually turning the four floors into an arts/cultural centre. We’re so pleased that they have invited us to fill the space with Hands Up Project memorabilia, poems and artwork, and I’ve just come back from 5 days there doing exactly that.
Ballinrobe’s Ulster bank had been left unoccupied for many years.
One of the new exciting features of the space is the safe.
Instead of storing rich people’s money and gold, our safe stores treasure of a very different kind. We have a screen with 7 key plays from the Hands up Project’s history of supporting Palestininian children with creating and performing plays in English. Vistors are welcome to come in and sit and watch these theatrical masterpieces.
The safe can seat up to four people at a time.
And there are also now many other iterations of the dress. Below you can see a traditional hand sewn Palestinian thobe, with tears added from all of the places along the route of the 2026 Pilgrimage for Palestine. The dress travelled with Peter Oswald, myself and many others along the route from Cáñar, a tiny village in the Alpujjara mountains in Spain, all the way to London. We were fasting for Ramadan while walking, and everywhere we stopped for iftar and poetry events, people added tears to the dress. It now takes pride of place in the Hands up Project’s space in Totnes.
Our new Irish ‘dress of impossible’ being decorated with crepe tears by Insaf and Omar’s 8 year old daughter Sara.
We have one one dedicated entirely to our art from the rubble exhibition .
The ‘Oh big blue’ room
We have one space dedicated to international solidarity.
Our beautiful tribute to our children and teachers killed by Israel.
Solidarity from around the world.
One of the intearctive zones where visitors can write messages of support on Gauze.
The poem by Em Berry which inspired the gauze activity
At the launch event last Thursday we had a screening of ‘From Gaza we speak’ in the main room downstairs.