R-City Coffee (think “Our” City) looks like any coffee shop in any city in the world: tables and chairs, coffee, coffee accessories, pastries and other tempting food items, newspapers, people working or talking—you’ve seen a hundred of these.
But R-City has something other coffee shops don’t have: two entrance doors, one opening up on the protestant side of the neighborhood and the other opening up on the Catholic side. This unique arrangement means that people from the two communities—Shankill and Ardoyne—have a place where all are welcome.
The café opened in 2016, and the concept caught on quickly in the traditionally antagonistic neighborhoods, which face each other right where R-City is located. Local initiative turned a former “hot spot” into a friendly gathering place. We’ll get to see how it all works when we visit the shop for coffee and a chat on Monday, June 4.
Alan Waite and Thomas Turley run youth clubs in the Ardoyne and Shankill areas and work to bring their groups together. It was the young people who thought up the idea of a coffee shop with two doors; profits from the business go back into the community by supporting youth programs. 
According to Alan, the hope was that the café would be a place where “both communities would feel comfortable and where the young people could socialize,” and that’s exactly what has happened.
But the cafe is only part of the story. “The R City project aims to instill leadership qualities, helping young people from the Shankill and Ardoyne areas on their pathway to learning and employment. The project will promote the positive stories and events young people are participating in across north Belfast” (Belfast Telegraph 11-4-13).
I heard about R-City Café on a PBS segment evaluating the state of Northern Ireland on the twentieth anniversary of the Belfast Peace agreement. The violence has ended, but the two communities have not come together as much as many would like, and tensions remain high in some areas. Alan and Tom and the young people in their groups are trying to change that.
Community based peacebuilding initiatives are having more success than government sponsored efforts in Northern Ireland, and it’s not hard to see why. Throughout the Troubles, both sides had cause to be suspicious whenever the government got involved. Today, with the provincial governing body in a standoff since March of 2017 and direct rule from Westminster threatened at every turn, communities are forging ahead to solve their own problems.
R-City focuses on youth for many reasons, not the least of which is that everybody knows the real hope for Northern Ireland lies in the generations that don’t remember the Troubles.
To learn more…
Click here to view the PBS segment: Two decades after peace pact, reconciliation still lags in Northern Ireland
You can learn more about R-City Café on their Facebook page; at the home page of their parent organization, Ignition; or in these two articles.
How a coffee shop is bridging the gap between Ardoyne and the Shankill
Belfast volunteers showcase what’s out there for young people in the city
Does the one Buddhist in Londonderry enter through a window?
Good memory, Pam!
This is always something that amazes me in my limited understanding as an American. I am an Anglican who married a Roman Catholic, something not so unusual in the US, but practically unheard of in Ireland. I will always remember Dave telling us that you can tell the Protestants and Catholics by the whiskey they order in the pub: Bushmill for the Protestants and Jameson for the Catholics.