‘Back on the Road’ is set in Ballynafeigh, a neighbourhood on the Ormeau Road in South Belfast, Northern Ireland. I hope you will get yourself a copy when it is published after Easter – and more importantly that it conveys  to you some sense of the vibrancy and energy of this special place called Ballynafeigh.

As I have said millions of times, in the context of a divided society, Ballynafeigh is unusual because it is a place where Protestants and Catholics, Northern Ireland’s traditional protagonists, have lived and worked alongside one another throughout all the years of the Troubles. In fact, the area was referred to as ‘mixed’ as early as 19111 so its diversity is much older than the current peace process.

It is also a place which is colourfully disparate in relation to social class, ethnicity, lifestyle and housing type and tenure; with redbrick terraces nestling alongside semi-detached villas and Council housing and flats beside large gentrified residences with gardens and trees. The area also contains probably the highest level of mixed religion and no-religion households in NI, significant in a city as conservative and polarised as Belfast and pointing to the possibility of a more pluralist future as this society emerges from over 30 years of bitter and bloody sectarian conflict.

This diversity can be very striking to an outsider, but  often invisible to those of us who live and work here and  who consider it quite natural that kids engaged in cricket, soccer, rugby and gaelic games should be playing  simultaneously on the playing fields in Cherryvale; or that a person in full African dress should dander up Kimberly Street on a bright summer afternoon,  past the youngsters on the corner booming out the latest  chart  hits on their ghetto blaster, past aromas of Indian cuisine and houses vibrating to the sound of  Polish Polkas or 2 ‘Diddlydee.’

At the same time Ballynafeigh exhibits its fair share of racism, sectarianism and anti-social behaviour, so it is no urban utopia without conflict or social division.  In fact, daily life here is characterised by a tangled web of intricate, competing and often conflicting sets of relationships as its residents engage in the struggle to maintain their diverse identities and equitably share physical space and everyday lives. For me personally, therein lies its beauty and its strength.

A determination to preserve this diverse character and ensure its continual survival and development, motivated people to set up Ballynafeigh Community Development  Association (Bcda) in 1974.  Since then, Bcda has evolved as a multi-purpose organisation operating a resource facility and acting as a catalyst for the creation and delivery of social actions to tackle disadvantage and address issues impacting on development and quality of life matters for individuals and groups.

As already described, Ballynafeigh is an area which is complex, challenging and intangible and Bcda has developed a practice which takes account of this. The Graphic Novel is an example of this approach.

The idea was born in 2003 at a Christmas Drop-In in Ballynafeigh Community House, one of those celebrations of the eccentric and the surreal that Bcda has become (in)famous for. Will and Ken Simpson of Rogue Rocket were there. Will had created a publicity piece, a black and white comic strip, for  a successful forum theatre production (Stevie’s Big Game) that Bcda had carried out in partnership with Partisan Productions and everyone  involved felt that Will’s artwork  had really captured the essence of the district.  The simplicity of the comic strip seemed to lend itself to the whole style of the area, its atmosphere of languid, unhurriedness and its laissez-faire view of the world. 

Stevie’s Big game had been based on real events and stories gathered from local people and we’d all been amazed at the intensity and humour inherent in these everyday stories of people’s lives. Anne Mckay (Scully as she was then) and Karen McFarlane were also there and to cut a long story short, the 5 of us got to talking over a few glasses of the old Christmas Cheer. Somehow we decided that a graphic novel would be a wonderful way to capture the complexity and the humour, both dark and light, the quirkiness and almost mythical enchantment inherent in a district as incongruent, and contradictory as Ballynafeigh.

In keeping with Bcda’s principles of community development and commitment to capacity-building and the fostering of learning and creativity, we all agreed that the project should involve not only the production of a Graphic Novel based on stories from people living in Ballynafeigh, but that the nurturing of skills in Graphic Art and Story-boarding should be an integral part of the process.

Will and Ken were eager to share their talents and to enthuse people with their love of this exiting medium. They therefore delivered a 20 week training programme in the Community House. That they did an excellent job is evidenced not only in the fact that the classes were so popular, but that two of the participants’ lives were dramatically changed- Mark Murphy decided to go part-time at work in order to spend more time on his art and Dermot Best gained a prestigious scholarship to the Joe Kubert School of Comic Book Art in New York, the first person from Northern Ireland ever to do so!

As NI society unleashes itself from the stifling straightjacket of violence and paranoia, I believe that a project such as ‘Back On the Road’ is timely, a harbinger of the artistic imagination just below the surface, striving to break free and show the world what it can do. In fact, we enjoyed every aspect of producing ‘Back on the Road’ so much that our minds are already forming the next big venture……

To conclude, I’d like to thank the Novel’s funders, NI Arts Council and NI Community Relations Council for their support; Will and Ken for all their time, hard work and dedication, Anne and Karen for their efforts to ensure that we completed the project and on time for publication and of course all the local people who contributed ideas and stories. It is their lives that this Graphic Novel celebrates.

I hope you enjoy reading the Novel- and make sure you let us know what you think about it.
Katie Hanlon  
Bcda Director

If you would like to purchase a copy of this superb limited edition graphic novel @ £7.99 plus p&p please email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it