Why citizen diplomacy matters
I lived in in Russia between June 2018 — April 2019. Few members of my family understood what I was going to do there and only one family member had ever visited, so it was unlikely that they’d have any idea of what I might experience.
In the midst of a busy work and social life, I didn’t always have enough time — or the right way — to tell my family in Northern Ireland what I was seeing everyday.
I was lucky to work on various cultural diplomacy projects in Moscow. These are important, particularly in the midst of the worst political relations between the UK and Russia since the cold war. Yet it also felt like a missed opportunity that I wasn’t able to share with my family and people back home what I was learning about the everyday, the mundane.
The role of grandparents in children’s lives. The way people queue (or don’t queue) at train stations. How the streets are cleaned everyday, no matter what the weather might be. How people cook and eat together. What food is important and when. How people interact at the banya, where you lie naked amongst countless other sweaty bodies. What questions people ask you on the train. What people think of the UK and other countries. What music people listen to and what they read on the metro. These are the things we may not think are important but which shape a country’s identity.
We live in an age where information travels instantly but knowledge is slow. Rather than rely on the headlines, I felt that it was important to share what I was experiencing to give a first-hand picture of life in Russia. It was also something I could share easily with my family. After all, diplomacy starts at home.
With that in mind, I approached the local (print-only) newspaper, the Ballymena and Antrim Guardian, to see if they would be interested in featuring some articles about Russia. Thankfully, they were open and articles were published between December 2018 and April 2019. There are 32,000 copies of the paper printed each week and the response from readers has been positive.
This series is based on these articles. It gives an accessible insight into life in Russia, from the perspective of a girl from rural Northern Ireland. I hope that by publishing them here, they also give you some perspective into Russia’s everyday beyond the headlines.
I went to live in Russia as an Alfa Fellow. It let me fulfil a life-long dream — I may only be 30, but it had always been a goal to live and work in Russia. The Alfa Fellowship Programme supported me to do this, and it also provided my boyfriend with a visa to join me.
