Inside the Belfast women’s centre building peace, one friendship at a time

Isabel Gibson and Betty Tompson met as strangers in the new multi-functional women’s centre, which officially opened last year and sits only metres from one of Belfast’s towering peace walls.

They are now best friends, boasting the sort of friendship that would have been rare in the old Belfast but now quietly signals how investment in shared spaces can rewire a city.

From division to a shared front door

For three bruising decades of violence that left 3 720 people dead and almost 50 000 injured, separation shaped daily routine here. Catholics and Protestants attended different schools, clubs, shops and even GP surgeries.

In that context, the shared front door of the Shankill Shared Women’s Centre - made possible by €9.2m funding through the PEACE IV programme - is a cultural watershed.

The 1 454m2 purpose-built, practical, walk-in hub folds education, childcare, health and wellbeing, employability training and good-relations work into a single place.

Crucially, it is a place designed to feel neutral and safe to women from different backgrounds. Here, the details are deliberate: soft seating, pale wood, warm light, an internal courtyard that slows the pace and invites people to pause. Activities are free at the point of use, with only a nominal annual registration fee, so cost isn’t a barrier to showing up.

Women leading the way to healing and connection

The location does some of the work, too. The building stands at a notorious interface where Protestants and Catholics once faced each other across armoured police and army Land Rovers and, later, a concrete-and-steel wall.

To site a shared facility here, within sight of gates that still close on some nights, is to draw a line in the sand and say the city can be lived another way.

Inside, the timetable reads like a map back into ordinary life.  ‘Connect 4 Women’ runs accredited classes - English and maths among them - to boost employability for women who missed those qualifications the first-time round. ‘Empowering Young Women’ supports 15–25-year-olds with confidence and life skills. ‘Good Relations’ sessions tackle stereotypes and teach practical conflict resolution. ‘Women in Transition’ uses art and drama to help participants process trauma and find their voices. There is also ‘Change Makers’, a short course in civic literacy and local decision-making, and a volunteer scheme that trained local women to help staff scale up as the centre moved from cramped rooms at a previous location to this new purpose-built space.

The offer is broad, but the core idea is simple: if women have the space and support to meet, learn and speak, they will lead their families - and their communities - away from fear.

Isabel

Isabel (61) comes from the Catholic side of this divide.Two decades ago, she walked her daughter to Holy Cross Girls’ Primary School through a loyalist protest that made international headlines for all the wrong reasons. She received death threats. When the siege ended and the cameras left, the shock remained; years later, when her adult daughter Catherine died, grief closed in. Counselling didn’t work. A daughter-in-law finally persuaded her to try something different by going to the centre.

It was with trepidation that Isabel crossed the peace line that first time. ‘I was afraid to go near the Shankill,’ she said. ‘Eventually, I plucked up the courage to go to the centre. I met new Catholic and Protestant friends, and I’ve never looked back.’ She still remembers the pivot point. ‘I thought, if I don’t change, nobody’s going to change. So, if I can change myself, hopefully other people can change too,’ she said.

Now she tells others the centre is 'a brilliant place to come,' where 'we can do as many courses as we want,' and where the labels that once governed her city have loosened. ‘Take the Catholic and the Protestant out of it and we’re all just people.’

Betty

Meanwhile, Betty (58) grew up a couple of streets - and a cultural world - away, in the Protestant Woodvale area.

She was just 10 when the bus she was travelling in was bricked by nationalists as her family and friends returned from watching a football match. ‘I’d never heard of Catholics before that happened,’ she said. 

She left Belfast for years, returned as her sons grew older and eventually let a friend talk her into trying the centre when depression had narrowed the days. ‘I’ve met some really nice people,’ she said. ‘When I was younger, I just always thought Catholics were different - like they had two heads or something. ‘But mixing here changed that 100%.’ Her focus now is on what the next generation inherits.

She wants her grandchildren to attend mixed schools, to grow up seeing difference as ordinary. ‘Places like this give Northern Ireland hope for the future,’ she said. ‘The past is the past: you’ve got to move on and forgive.’

Just two friends

Their friendship is unshowy and practical. They met in class and traded small talk, before developing the kind of connection that can only be built when the room feels safe.

Soon they were going on cross-community group day trips and, later, on holidays together. They talk about their communities not as opposing camps but as places that shaped them, and about the relief of discovering that neither defines the other.

Ask staff what makes this place different, and they start with design and ethos. Manager Dr Betty Carlisle MBE, who has spent almost four decades building peace and opportunity, said it is about finding the middle ground. ‘This new build is placed in a part of Belfast which is a known interface area,’ she said. ‘Through our programmes, women meet each other in a safe and secure space whereby they can learn together and in turn attitudes and behaviours will be changed.’

She points to the humanising details - ‘soft spaces, muted colours, pale wood’ and the general decor “designed to be safe, comfortable and welcoming” - as the backdrop to something bigger. She added: ‘Overall, the building is all about learning respect, making friends with people, enhancing skills and improving employability.’

‘This new build is placed in a part of Belfast which is a known interface* area,’ she said. ‘Through our programmes, women meet each other in a safe and secure space whereby they can learn together and in turn attitudes and behaviours will be changed.’

She points to the humanising details - ‘soft spaces, muted colours, pale wood’ and the general decor “designed to be safe, comfortable and welcoming” - as the backdrop to something bigger.

She added: ‘Overall, the building is all about learning respect, making friends with people, enhancing skills and improving employability.’

It is an intentionally ordinary place; transformation lies in what that ordinariness allows women to attempt. One of the traps in telling Northern Ireland’s story is the tug toward abstractions: constitutional arrangements and statistics.

The power of ordinary things

It is an intentionally ordinary place; transformation lies in what that ordinariness allows women to attempt. One of the traps in telling Northern Ireland’s story is the tug toward abstractions: constitutional arrangements and statistics.

Those matter. But if you’re trying to understand how peace holds, it helps to shrink the frame. Put two women in a room and ask what they need. Isabel needed a place to talk about her daughter without feeling judged or unsafe. Betty needed a reason to leave the house and a community that would meet her where she was. They found all of that under one roof.

Beyond the centre’s walls, demand for shared spaces is huge. Gina McIntyre, Chief Executive of the Special EU Programmes Body, which managed the PEACE IV programme, says buildings like this do more than house services.

‘The creation of shared spaces, such as this building, within our post-conflict society are crucial in terms of delivering a more inclusive place for this and future generations,’ she said.

‘Shared spaces can provide an essential catalyst for socio-economic change. By bringing people together in a safe and neutral environment, shared spaces help to break down stereotypes, dispel prejudices and promote a sense of mutual respect and understanding.’

Twenty-seven years after the Good Friday Agreement, the work of reconciliation looks less like ceremony and more like routine - kettles boiled, classes taught, toddlers coaxed into crèche.

Recognition beyond Belfast

The EU REGIOSTARS Awards - Europe’s annual showcase for transformative regional projects - shortlisted Shankill Shared Women’s Centre in 2025.

The staff, characteristically, are thinking less about trophies than about timetables and teapots, but the nod is a reminder that careful investment in a shared space can cast a longer shadow than its footprint.

Back at the noticeboard, you won’t see the word 'REGIOSTARS.' You will see a timetable. And you will see women arriving with prams for a skills course; a teenager ducking into a youth session; Isabel texting Betty to say she’s running late. It is all very ordinary, which is the point. The walls outside may take years to come down. But inside the Shankill Shared Women’s Centre in Belfast, they are already practising for the day after that happens.