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Radio Ulster brings together radio documentaries from UK and Irish broadcasters.

Radio Ulster brings together some of the best radio documentaries from UK and Irish broadcasters.

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Stories in Sound: The Silence and the Scream

The Silence and the Scream

BBC Radio Ulster - Stories in Sound, The Silence and the Scream

Garrett Carr on the radical commune which broke the silence of rural Donegal in the 1970s.

Author Garrett Carr on the radical, free-thinking commune which shattered the silence of a remote Donegal fishing community in the 1970s.

Silence is a kind of virtue in County Donegal. You can find it in the desolate landscape, the big skies and far horizons - but silence can be found in the people too. Maybe it's discretion or reticence. It could be shyness or wisdom. So when radical free-thinking commune, The Atlantis Foundation, set up home in the remote Donegal village of Burtonport in the mid-1970s, it seemed like an unlikely choice of location. 

Led by charismatic Englishwoman Jenny James and inspired by psychology from the American counter culture, the foundation practised something called 'primal scream' therapy. This was about letting it all out - yelling, shouting and shrieking - to release deep rooted fears. The locals simply called them 'The Screamers.' 

Author and Donegal native Garrett Carr was a boy when he first heard about the Screamers. While he found the name unnerving, Garrett was intrigued. Now he's returning home to Donegal to find out who the Screamers were, what they wanted and if they ever managed to find it. Most of all he wants to know what happened when the quiet restraint of his local community was confronted by the radical, outward abandonment of the Atlantis Foundation.

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