Celebrating a Milestone Decade of Marriage Equality
Brian Sheehan, Anna McCarthy, Karl Hayden and Anna Nolan on the panel with Audrey Whitty
Yes Equality Campaign: Digital Archive Launch
The 'Yes Equality' Campaign's digital archive was generously donated to the NLI in 2020. The donation was one of the NLI’s first born-digital pilot projects and also one of the first to become fully accessible online. The digital archive comprises photographs, videos and digital records from the campaign and it will be made available in full at a later date. Read the full press release here.
To commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the historic Marriage Equality referendum, a selection of over 1,000 photographs from the digital collection have been catalogued and launched online. All the images were taken by photographer Paul Sharp, who was commissioned by 'Yes Equality' to document the activities of the campaign, voting day and post-result celebrations, and to capture the spirit and passion behind it.
Explore the collection here.
Yes Equality Campaign: Digital Visual Archive. Photograph © Paul Sharp/SHARPPIX Reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Ireland
Yes Equality campaigners pointing to Yes on the Yes Equality billboard outside Dáil Éireann. Paul Sharpe.Call no: YE/848790/019/001 (Online)
Yes Equality cupcakes, Paul Sharpe. Call No: YE/848800/005/002 (Online)
Yes Equality supporters on O'Connell Street. Paul Sharpe. Call no: YE/848804/032/002 (Online)
Senator David Norris with Yes Equality campaigners in front of the Yes Equality bus. Paul Sharpe. Call no: YE/848802/002/002 (Online)
Yes Equality press conference for the campaign launch. Paul Sharpe. Call no: YE/848788/033/002 (Online)
Revisiting the Yes Equality Campaign | Panel event, May 15th 2025
To celebrate and commemorate the pivotal anniversary, the NLI hosted a panel discussion on May 15th, ‘Revisiting the Yes Equality Campaign: A Decade of Marriage Equality’, with key advocates from the campaign. The panel discussion reflected on the 2015 Marriage Equality Referendum and Yes Equality campaign.
The panel included:
Brian Sheehan, former Co-Director of Yes Equality; Karl Hayden, filmmaker, photographer and LGBTI+ activist and Anna MacCarthy, activist and organiser with LGBT Noise. Anna Nolan, Chairperson of NXF (National LGBT Federation) and television producer, will chair the discussion.
More details here.
Panel Discussion
Revisiting the Yes Equality Campaign Event
Digital Collections team and Director Audrey Whitty
Web Archiving:
As Ireland’s memory-keeper, the NLI is committed to capturing, protecting and sharing the country’s diverse voices and experiences. Under our web archiving we collect, preserve and provide access to the websites that formed part of the 2015 Marriage Equality Referendum campaigns, many of which are no longer on the live web. We have highlighted a selection of these sites below but encourage you to explore further.
The Marriage Referendum collection in the NLI Web Archive is here and some examples of archived websites that existing during the campaign are below:
Advocacy sites for Yes:
Advocacy sites for No:
EU House Photographic Exhibition:
The NLI was pleased to collaborate with the team at EU House, the European Parliament Liaison Office in Ireland, to curate a temporary exhibition of selected photographs by Paul Sharp. The images are drawn from the Yes Equality Campaign digital archive and will be on display at the Europa Gallery, 11 Chatham Street, Dublin 2, from 21 May to 4 July.
The exhibition is free to attend and open 7 days a week. Please see here for more details.
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