In 1977, an orca made its way up the River Foyle in Derry in search of salmon. For several days the animal, which locals nicknamed “Dopey Dick”, was a somewhat unlikely point of community cohesion – and a welcome distraction from the everyday violence of the Troubles.

Dopey Dick’s visit was a unifying event in an oft-divided city, says the designer Ralf Alwani: “It brought people together.” Forty years on, the orca has proved inspirational in addressing a significant challenge in Derry today.

Northern Ireland has the highest rate of suicide in the UK. In Derry, the charity Foyle Search and Rescue was established in response almost 25 years ago in response to the number of lives lost to suicide in the river; it assisted in more than 230 incidents in 2016 alone. A recent spike in incidents on the river has contributed to pressure to respond by the city.

The river and its three bridges are the focus of the Future Foyle project led by Alwani of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art, researching how design approaches can improve mental health and wellbeing in the city. “It is the source and the focal point of a city that has a civic desire to renew, to reemerge from our dark past,” he says.

Alwani says interviews recorded with residents in 2016 about their associations with the river revealed that Dopey Dick’s visit “changed the perceptions of the river” as a frequent site of tragedy. This finding proved a point of departure in the Future Foyle project.

With the help of local artists, the team built a full-size replica orca to float down the river as part of Derry’s yearly Maritime festival and Halloween celebrations – an attempt to recapture the magic of Dopey Dick. “The response was amazing,” says Alwani. “We began to understand how [Dopey Dick], coming at a time of conflict for the city, still resonates as a positive memory.

“We learned that the river plays such a significant role in the local consciousness, so we began to think about how the project could do something similar by reanimating the river in a positive way – creating what we hope will be a new, positive memory.”

The Foyle and its surrounding area is a widely used civic space and source of pride for residents, especially since Derry’s success as the UK city of culture in 2013. But researchers also found that it could often be a place of isolation and darkness. “We wanted to see what interventions we could make that might change people’s behaviour and create a sense of festivity at all hours,” says Alwani.

A series of temporary interactive installations produced with artists, musicians and students from Queens University Belfast were placed along the riverfront and over the Peace Bridge to improve how people engaged with the space. Over the course of the four-day event, the team recorded 15,000 crossings – “more visits than most small art galleries get in a year,” says Alwani.

With the support of the Public Health Agency NI, the team is now working on permanent design interventions, the first being the Foyle Reeds project, slated to be completed by 2020. In what will be the largest art installation in Northern Ireland 12,000 digital “reeds” – with aluminium petals that move in the wind changing colour as they detect the movement of passersby – will line the existing barrier of the Foyle Bridge.

The reeds, attached to the existing balustrade, will vary in height from 2.5–3 meters, effectively forming a physical prevention barrier. “But more importantly,” says Alwani ,“they will change the atmosphere of the bridge”.

Research by the influential thinktank the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Healthhas shown that “mental health is closely associated with strong social connections” and that changing the feel of a place plays a role.

Dr Layla McCay, the centre director and an adjunct professor of international health at Georgetown University in Washington DC, says research into this relationship – and how it could be practically applied to improve mental health outcomes in cities – is ongoing. “One theory is that installations that evoke nature can make people feel less anxious; another is that investing in places that have meaning to communities can evoke pride in a neighbourhood. The Foyle Reeds project has elements of both of these theories.”

The second project planned by Alwani’s team isthe “Foyle Bubbles”: 42 pop-up pod-like structures along the riverfront to be occupied by local community organisations and commercial groups. In exchange for the space, tenants would be required to undergo annual training in mental health support, first aid, therapeutic counselling and emotional wellbeing, setting the scene for what the team hope will be a “community-based response” to suicide risks.

Alwani hopes that, with training, the occupants of the pods will be able to identify people who are potentially in crisis, equipping “everyday people to provide informal support, without the clinical fear factor”. The Derry taxi company Destined runs a successful scheme, based on the same principles and funded by the Public Health Authority NI, where their drivers are trained in mental health support. The pods, Alwani says, will achieve something similar by “creating a sense of community cohesion on the riverfront. Where people – especially young men [who are overrepresented in suicide statistics] – might not walk into a GP, they might talk to their barber or tattooist.

“If people feel like they belong to something then they will see it as a different place.”

10 September is World Suicide Prevention Day. Find out more here.

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.

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