Plural memory
A museum for the Troubles and Peace must hold different experiences in public view without flattening them into a single authorised story.
Assembly Rooms · Belfast
A civic home for memory, history and peace.
MOTAP’s long-term vision is for a Museum of the Troubles and Peace rooted in Belfast’s civic centre — a place capable of carrying multiple narratives, public education and the work of reconciliation with seriousness and care.
The Assembly Rooms is the embodiment of Enlightenment Belfast.
The Assembly Rooms, Belfast — one of the city’s most iconic buildings — has had a neglected and abandoned appearance. MOTAP designed the successful proposal to the World Monuments Fund that got WMF involved in saving the building. As John Gray of the Assembly Rooms Alliance put it, this was a “game changer”, and led to Belfast City Council buying the building.
The Assembly Rooms was at the centre of a major anti-slavery campaign and a force for cultural renewal, including the famous Belfast Harp Festival of 1792. MOTAP’s vision is to create a Museum of the Troubles and Peace, ideally located in the renovated Assembly Rooms and sitting alongside other community and cultural initiatives.
A museum with its emphasis on multiple narratives of the Troubles can be a modern expression of the spirit of the Belfast Enlightenment: civic, plural, ambitious and outward-looking.
Civic renewal
The renewed Assembly Rooms can connect Belfast’s Enlightenment history with the city’s future as a place of learning, welcome and shared cultural life.
International recognition
MOTAP is proud to have helped catalyse international recognition of the Assembly Rooms and wider engagement in safeguarding a vital part of Belfast’s heritage.
Part of the wider MOTAP vision.
The Assembly Rooms ambition sits alongside MOTAP’s public archive, education work, historical photography and commitment to a safe shared space for reflecting on the Troubles and the Peace Process.
Read about the project