Belfast, Northern Ireland
Bryonie Reid is a writer, artist, and cultural geographer whose work explores the deep connections between place, memory, and belonging. Working with her sister, Gemma Reid, as Quarto Collective, she creates community-based projects that invite people to reflect on the landscapes they inhabit, the histories they inherit, and the futures they hope to imagine together.
Rooted in Northern Ireland’s complex history, Bryony’s practice is shaped by listening, curiosity, and the quiet work of building relationships across difference. Through art, storytelling, and collaborative public projects, she creates spaces where communities can engage with the past while nurturing new possibilities for peace, connection, and shared belonging.
Belfast, Northern Ireland
“Everybody’s more complicated than you think.”
Peace means living in “both, and”:
“Speaking subjectively I would say peace for me means acceptance of all the messiness, the uncertainty, the things that make me fear and despair and anger me and the things that give me hope and that I delight in here. Those are all there. It’s never going to be one or the other. It’s always both and… If we can be in a space of comparative peace, that allows us to share and listen.”
The slow flowering of peace:
“We certainly trust that simply by meeting, connecting with, being honest with, being loving towards each other, something is going to grow even if that’s slow, even if that’s like two, three decades away, the flowering of that, it’s going to happen.”
The quiet work of peacebuilding:
“There are an awful lot of individuals and often women who are doing what I’m calling quiet work that isn’t about a public message, it’s about building relationships. And trusting that in the building of that relationship, lots of things, rich things, are going to happen… For something as complex as building peace, you can’t dictate how and when it’s going to happen.”
Listening as the path beyond fear:
“I think the invitation to step over or sidestep or push through or go beyond that barrier of fear, insecurity, shame, anger, grief, sense of injustice is really based on being able to listen… If somebody’s willing to share, somebody might be willing to listen. And in that process, I think those emotions have a chance of becoming less… or tangling with something else that changes them.”
To read the introduction to this series, follow this link.
The Troubles: Finding a Path Toward Healing in Northern Ireland
To listen to our podcast, follow this link or find us on the platform of your choice.
A Peace of My Mind on Buzzsprout
Credits:
Interview: summer intern Kaitlin Imai
Field production: summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
Photo: John Noltner
Audio engineering: Razik Saifullah
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