Gerry McAlinden / Member

As a civil servant, Newry-born Gerry McAlinden engaged with communities from all traditions providing pathways to employment for school-leavers. In the European Commission he supported local communities taking charge of local development: was CEO for the Northern Ireland Centre in Europe in the 1990s. He has led technical assistance teams helping governments to meet EU membership conditions – in the Baltics, Poland, Croatia, Kosovo and Bosnia; and currently in Ukraine and Albania. His experience also extends to partnership-based local development and policy dialogue in South Africa. His PhD thesis explores the people-factor in development policy/practice, how individuals together negotiate and shape policy at each delivery-point, often creating unintended outcomes. So often, music, art and culture lie at the heart of those relationships. Gerry has a long relationship collaborating with Tommy Sands using music, poetry and drama to build bridges where differences divide: with unemployed youths in the ‘70s, or Poets-and-Pints in Newry during the dark ‘80s and again now as part of the Artsawonder collective