Accepting the opportunity to become Derry~Londonderry UK City of Culture’s principal partner was simply a nobrainer for BT. The company’s Director of Corporate Services Peter Morris says the city has long played a pivotal role in their operations in Ireland and the partnership opportunity was a perfect fit. “It was such great news that the city was to be recognised as a City of Culture, for so many different reasons,” he says. “The North West region and Derry~Londonderry in particular are very important to BT, both in terms of our commitment to the number of our own people who live and work in the area but also our thriving business and consumer customer base. “BT has also invested significantly in bringing fibre broadband technology to all of the street cabinets serving customers within Derry City ahead of any other cities in UK and Ireland. To meet that challenge for the UK’s first City of Culture was very important for us, and from there it was a very short step to becoming the principal partner for 2013.” Connecting local Communities has also been a key theme for BT for some time now and again Derry is playing a pivotal role in their thinking. The BT Connected Communities programme is a major initiative, which was launched in a number of cities and towns across Ireland in 2011 to establish on-theground IT support and resources in a bid to tackle online social exclusion. BT now
supports 16 community groups with no less than a quarter of them here in the city. “That demonstrates the level of our commitment to Derry,” adds Peter. “The idea of working with the community groups and helping them to make the most of the technology available was very appealing to us. “In Derry we began working with a number of community groups and the Gasyard project was the first one of those to go live. “The idea was not only to provide the technology and the fibre infrastructure in each of the community centres but we also make available teams of volunteers who go along and help out with the training and any additional support they need to make everything run as smoothly as possible.” Involvement in community projects then became the driving force behind the decision to back the BT Portrait of a City project to compile one of the biggest digital archives of a city the world has ever seen. “Again, it was a perfect match for us,” explains Peter. “We were very excited at the prospect of being at the forefront of a project aiming to deliver a digital archive on a scale never seen before. Recognised as a leading digital technology company, that appealed to us greatly.
“People perhaps see BT as a large multinational company, but really it is very much a local company working very hard to help local communities and businesses. “It is tremendously rewarding to work so closely with community groups and to get people of all ages involved. BT Portrait of a City will help to take the City of Culture to every single person in the city.” Peter feels that the community projects in the 2013 City of Culture programme will make a real lasting difference as the city moves forward. “When you look at the full programme of events for the year, there are obviously headline events like the Turner Prize, the Fleadh coming to Derry for the first time, the big concerts at Ebrington, the Return of Field Day. “But I think it is the grass roots projects and events which will really reach out and touch people’s lives and make a real difference. That to me will have the biggest impact during the City of Culture year. “At the same time the City of Culture accolade will be helping to support small businesses in the city as well. One of our key aims is to help businesses improve their connectivity to communicate worldwide. That is going to help not just the city of Derry going forward, but also leave a lasting legacy that can make a very real impact on Northern Ireland and beyond.”
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