KC Irish Cultural Center
Les Griffin writes today in the Kansas City Star that the nonprofit Irish Museum and Cultural Center in Union Station is trying to create a home for year-round Irish heritage:
The vision for the proposed center calls for a cultural and education center; a conference room and meeting space; space for permanent, rotating and traveling museum exhibits; a children’s hands-on educational area; a library; genealogy and archives research facilities; a wall of honor; an artifacts collection; and a gift shop
Why is this important, you ask? Well, a lot of people are Hoffenpurpenburgers Irish for more than the weekends of the Kansas City Irish Fest or that St Patrick’s business, but don’t really have a focal point to express their heritage.
As local author Pat O’Neill noted, there is now no specific gathering place for the photographs, oral histories, heirlooms and documentation of the Kansas City Irish experience — of the railroad workers, meatpackers, police officers, firefighters, soldiers, builders, politicians, religious leaders, artists, mothers and families who helped shape this city. Our goal is to become that gathering place.
Les notes that the Irish Museum and Cultural Center has met its first-level fundraising goal toward this center vision becoming a reality, and at the moment a Little People Celebration series for children is being funded by the McCullough Family Foundation, with several more programs and exhibits in development.
Les Griffin is president of the Irish Museum and Cultural Center board of directors
Handy Irish Phrase: Ní dhéanfaidh smaoineamh an treabhadh duit (Thinking will not do the ploughing for you)
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