First in a new series. Gary Lamont runs a successful architectural services business in Ballymena - but he's also a local man and a church leader, still living in the community where he grew up - and committed to the redevelopment of his community, even if that starts with just "pulling a weed". Gary also wants the restoration of community relations with everyone who now lives there. And as he explains to Diane and Will, that hope was badly dented with the racially motivated riots in Ballymena in the summer of 2025. This episode is also available in video on Thrive Ireland's YouTube channel.

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In association with The Northern Ireland Community Relations Council

Get ready! Diane Holt and Will Leitch are back with a new series of Inspired to Act from Thrive Ireland for 2026-7! You can listen on all the same platforms as before, but now you can also see us in HD Video with our guests in the studio, over on our Youtube channel.

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Nathaniel Jennings isn't easy to place - and it's brilliant! With an American dad, an English mum, and a Jamaican grandfather, he grew up in Bangladesh, was educated in the UK, and later married a woman from east Belfast - where they now live with their son and daughter. Working as Intercultural Ministries Director for OMF (UK), he's just the person to help Diane and Will understand good relations among different cultures, and see the arrival of Christians from many other nations as gifts to us... Last episode in series 3.

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It's time to rethink community relations, because reconciliation almost certainly isn't what you think it is. Even the word itself gets everything from an eye-roll to a myriad different definitions, depending whom you ask. In a special episode, Diane and Will hear about a new study trying to work out what has changed. They're joined by the report author, Dr Cathy Bollaert, and the Very Rev Dr Norman Hamilton - both board members of Contemporary Christianity. The work was also undertaken by Clonard Monastery Belfast, Youthlink, and supported by the Community Relations Council.

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Norman Hamilton is known for his efforts to help broker peace during the Holy Cross dispute in Belfast of 25 years ago. Anyone aged over 40 will remember the images which flew around the world - as the police and army escorted young children to and from their primary school, in the midst of an adult dispute over interfaces, and claim and counter-claim of sectarian abuse. Now a retired Presbyterian Minister, Norman tells Diane and Will that for those few months of his life, Holy Cross, confronted him with "public evil, on a grand scale".

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Joe McKeown's life could have been very different. He grew up in West Belfast during the Troubles, and saw plenty of conflict, for a time joining in with the recreational stone-throwing when the army or RUC were there. Later he learned that his grandfather - a demonstrably innocent man - had initially been branded as an IRA gunman after being shot and killed by a teenaged soldier. To one side, a justifiable casualty, to the other, a murder victim. Yet Joe chose not revenge, but peace and reconciliation, rooted in his Christian faith. Joe now runs the youth service Youthlink - and he tells Diane and Will how his decision was simply "saying 'Yes' to possibility".

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Ruth Garvey-Williams lives and works in the small Donegal town of Buncrana. Yet despite living in what's often dubbed "Ireland's forgotten county", she and her family make a huge impact across the island and beyond. Ruth helped found their church, edits a magazine, and serves with local and national groups tackling suicide, poverty, and immigration issues. She works as leader, journalist, author, playwright and researcher. And still she found time to join Diane and Will for a fascinating discussion on the joys - and the cost - of "ministering at the margins".

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Dr John Kyle has had 3 intertwined careers, as a GP, as a church leader, and as a local councillor. Determined to make a difference for peace and reconciliation, he made a choice to join a party which raised a lot of eyebrows. He joined the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), which had links with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), and served with them on Belfast City Council for well over a decade. But as Diane and Will discover, there's much more to John's story than that...

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