At the Tower Museum in Derry visitors cannot only see the props from the popular sitcom Derry Girls, they can sit on them.
“It’s exactly how it is on the show,” says Tara Schrader, gasping in surprise when she sees the Quinn’s livingroom, complete with sofa, television and picture of the Sacred Heart.
She and her son David, both from Perth in Australia, get comfortable on the sofa to pose for a selfie. Asked for her highlight she is in no doubt. “It’s this, has to be this,” she says.
“This has been such a hit,” says curator Roisin Doherty. “Just by sitting on it people feel happy they’re part of the show, because they’re sitting where the actors actually sat. It’s amazing, it’s a really good feeling. It’s like a happy exhibition.”
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In the centre of Derry that happiness is much in evidence. The window of the tourist office, Visit Derry, is filled with Derry Girls-themed gifts. The Derry Girls mural, on nearby Orchard Street, is a must-see on the city’s tourist trail, while Gleann Doherty of Derry Guided Tours is waiting for a group for a Derry Girls walking tour. “It’s huge. People are coming from all parts of the planet; it’s just non-stop,” he says.
Doherty started out doing political and historical tours of the city but he says the Derry Girls tour, taking visitors to sites featured in the series, now rivals the Bogside and its murals in popularity.
“You do think: this is crazy, the amount of people. I had some the other day from the States, they randomly found the programme [on Netflix] and it put Derry on the map, so they came here to do the tour.”
The Channel 4 series, about four teenage girls – and one “wee English fellah” – at a convent school in Derry in the mid-1990s was a critical and popular success when it launched in 2018 and reached global audiences when it was picked up by Netflix.
“It has been a surprising gift to the tourism industry,” says Odhran Dunne, chief executive of Visit Derry. Over the last year more than 30 per cent of people who came to its visitor centre cited Derry Girls as the “deciding factor” for their visit to the city – and, he says, its impact has gone further.
“A lot of people have watched the series and never been to Ireland, never mind Derry ... we’d be expecting lots of fans still to arrive over the coming years who haven’t had the opportunity to make it here yet, and that can only benefit the island.”
[ Derry Girls most-watched TV programme in NI last yearOpens in new window ]
Though only open since July, the exhibition in the Tower Museum – The Derry Girls Experience – has given the museum its best ever year.
Just over 38,000 people visited it this year, twice as many as in 2022, and from 42 countries, though the largest group, unsurprisingly, was people from Northern Ireland; they made up 48 per cent of visitors. The second largest – 14 per cent – came from the South.
The programme-makers have given the museum everything – “the set, all of the props” – on permanent loan. This includes the Quinn livingroom and kitchen, exhibits include Clare’s school uniform, James’ “Doctor Who” scarf, the child of Prague statue and Erin’s diary.
“People are coming because they have seen the show, without a doubt, so it was really important they had somewhere to go when they came,” says Aeidin McCarter, head of culture with Derry City and Strabane District Council. “If you go to New York because you watched Friends, or to the Cheers pub in Boston, you want to get your picture taken outside.”
The mural and the museum have become those focal points: “People love the artefacts...the fact that we have the real stuff here is so special. These are the actual pieces that were in the show, in the home of Derry Girls.”
In so doing, they are also telling the story of Derry in a different – and funnier – way. A panel on “Derry Girls and the Troubles” outlines the context and Bill Clinton’s 1995 visit plays on a loop on the television in the Quinn livingroom.
At the end of the exhibition visitors post their feedback in the ballot box used by the characters when they vote on the referendum on the Belfast Agreement at the end of the show’s final series.
[ The Irish Times view on the world of Derry Girls: a holiday from historyOpens in new window ]
“It’s brought the focus back to something that’s serious, but that’s looked at in a very comedic way,” says Roisin Doherty.
“People have learned an awful lot,” adds McCarter. “My kids are saying, is that what it was like? It is bringing us a whole new raft of visitors, and it’s brought a whole new lens – people see this place completely differently.”
“It’s captured all that is unique about the place, it is about the people, personality, our sense of humour in the face of adversity,” says Dunne. “Derry Girls has transformed the awareness and the perception of the place.”
“Everyone watches it [in Australia],” says Schrader. “It became quite huge, and everyone was like, ‘have you watched it?’ As a teenager you just sort of adapt to your environment of how you’re growing up and you think that’s normal, and they just adapted to it and had the same problems as every other teenager, so you can adapt to it [the show] regardless of where you are.”
Derry Girls and the show’s creator Lisa McGee have brought their city an unexpected windfall; the next step is how to make the most of it.
“We want to spread the Derry Girls love throughout the city. Our next step as we develop is we want to see more of the collection out and about and animating the places and spaces that were such a part of a show,” says McCarter. “There’s still huge potential. It’s like Friends – there’s always going to be a new audience for it.”
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