WASHINGTON (AP) — Two murals of Northern Ireland being painted on the National Mall over the next two weeks seek to tell a new story about the territory — beyond its painful history of sectarian and religious conflict.More than 160 performers, artists and regular citizens from Northern Ireland have travelled to Washington to participate in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

They’re using art, music, sports, food and even Irish whisky to showcase their homeland as it works to heal communal divisions following four decades of bloodshed. A new power-sharing government between Catholics and Protestants was formed in May.

“I wanted to be part of that,” said Rachel Sinnamon, one of the muralists, “to show how far we’ve come and to show it’s not all terrorism and bombs anymore.”

Northern Ireland joins the “Roots of Virginia Culture” and Asia’s Mekong River region as the focus of the 41st annual festival, which began last Wednesday and stretches seven city blocks between the US Capitol and Washington Monument. It is one of the largest festivals put on by the Smithsonian Institution with 708 guest artists and participants who speak 32 different languages.

The nearly $6 million festival ran through Sunday and again from July 4 through July 8. It is free of charge and typically draws more than one million visitors each year.

In the Northern Ireland section, a peace mural being replicated from one painted in Londonderry will feature colourful squares and a white dove in the centre. On the other side of the three-story wall, artists are painting a black and white mural depicting Belfast industry, from the shipyard workers who built the Titanic to linen workers and the city’s skyline.

Murals took on political and militant messages in Belfast in the 1960s and 1970s, with some depicting hooded gunman or hunger strikers. They continue to draw curious tourists, but Sinnamon and others are painting over those murals with images of Protestants and Catholics coming together.

That idea of reconciliation is a broad theme at the festival, which highlights the Mekong region’s history of conflict and the Vietnam War, and Virginia’s volatile history involving English settlers, African slaves and Native Americans.

“For Americans, when you say Mekong, most people immediately say Mekong Delta and think of the war 30 years ago,” said Richard Kennedy, a co-curator of the festival’s Mekong section. “It’s a very, very different world now. Vietnam and China have opened up greatly to the international community.”

Hundreds of participants and translators from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and the Yunnan province of China are featured in “Mekong River: Connecting Cultures”. They bring music, dance and “some silk weaving that is absolutely world-class,” said festival director Diana Parker.

The cuisine includes Vietnamese grilled pork on a skewer and Cambodian fresh ginger chicken.

The Virginia programme takes centre stage to coincide with this year’s 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. It includes a delegation from Kent County, England, which sent over the first settlers in 1607, as well as eight American Indian tribes and West Africans representing the state’s black history. “Fifty years ago, you wouldn’t have seen me here,” said Stephen Adkins, chief of Virginia’s Chickahominy Tribe. “We here in America have come a long way in appreciating diversity.” Gov. Tim Kaine said the founding of Jamestown was the “cultural equivalent of the big bang” because the groups that came together in Virginia began “the story of our nation”.