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06/10/2023
Belfast City Council To Deliver Creative And Cultural Celebration
Belfast City Council has allocated £5.9 million to host the most extensive creative and cultural celebration in the city's history.
The programme includes world-class spectacle events and community-led activities planned for 2024, beginning next spring.
The Belfast 2024 programme will see the city come alive with ambitious, participative workshops, performances and events and an array of creative projects and initiatives, celebrating our homegrown culture, creativity and the city itself. The investment was approved by all political parties earlier this autumn and follows extensive engagement with local cultural, community and arts providers over the last 18 months, as well as ongoing public consultation around how best to showcase Belfast’s many diverse and unique cultures.
People, Place and Planet will be the key themes in a programme of 24 large-scale commissions, that will bring over 200 events, workshops and activities to Belfast from March to November 2024.
17 of the major events planned have been specially commissioned following an open call to artists, collectives and organisations earlier this year.
Together, they will provide a welcome financial boost to the cultural sector, supporting jobs and creating new opportunities for residents to enjoy, access and participate in the arts and creativity, encouraging visitors into Belfast to support the local economy, and showcasing the city as a global destination for culture.
Signature events in development so far include:
• Eden Project Partnership – Belfast City Council has been working in collaboration with Eden Project, based in Cornwall, to develop a partnership with Belfast. It will explore our relationship with nature and the climate crisis and how we re-evaluate and re-invent our urban spaces to be more sustainable and become more engaged with the natural world through creative and cultural interventions. Throughout 2024, Eden, together with local project partners, will deliver a series of city centre and neighbourhood interventions across Belfast focussed on greening and growing with local communities.
• Public art, inspired by nature – Council is also working in collaboration with Oliver Jeffers, the Nerve Centre and the Eden Project on research and development around the potential for public art installations in Belfast city centre in April/May 2024. These will be based on the themes of nature, power and a greener city and highlight the importance of sustainability in the Belfast’s future development and growth.
• Maritime-inspired events – a renewed focus on the River Lagan, highlighting our maritime heritage and re-engaging our people with the river, during summer and winter 2024.
• Maritime-themed concepts under development include a river pavilion, a mass boat-building project and beer and bread brewing activities, marking the city's origins and connections with the River Farset.
• Black Mountain Shared Space guerilla gardening project with creative lead Eileen McClory - an ambitious large-scale, multi-layered, multi-artform and multi-event project throughout 2024. It aims to rewild peace walls in west Belfast into vibrant, inclusive, vertical gardens for the future, through dance, storytelling and gardening, while inspiring civic pride and activism within local communities.
• Celebrating the International Decade of African Descent - Kwame Daniels and Bounce Culture will present an immersive music event as a finale to a city-wide engagement project, inspired by Frederick Douglass' famous quote about feeling at home in Belfast during his time here in 1800s.
• Immersive Experience at Thompson Dry Dock – developed in partnership with architect Henry Sykes and Three’s Theatre Company, this spectacle event in late summer/early autumn 2024 will combine light, shadow, colour and sound and take place in the iconic dock where the Titanic was launched. 40 feet below sea level, it will invite the audience to participate and experience the world around them from a different perspective.
• City of Music event – a major event in autumn 2024, celebrating Belfast's local music scene and highlighting our UNESCO City of Music designation.
The programme includes world-class spectacle events and community-led activities planned for 2024, beginning next spring.
The Belfast 2024 programme will see the city come alive with ambitious, participative workshops, performances and events and an array of creative projects and initiatives, celebrating our homegrown culture, creativity and the city itself. The investment was approved by all political parties earlier this autumn and follows extensive engagement with local cultural, community and arts providers over the last 18 months, as well as ongoing public consultation around how best to showcase Belfast’s many diverse and unique cultures.
People, Place and Planet will be the key themes in a programme of 24 large-scale commissions, that will bring over 200 events, workshops and activities to Belfast from March to November 2024.
17 of the major events planned have been specially commissioned following an open call to artists, collectives and organisations earlier this year.
Together, they will provide a welcome financial boost to the cultural sector, supporting jobs and creating new opportunities for residents to enjoy, access and participate in the arts and creativity, encouraging visitors into Belfast to support the local economy, and showcasing the city as a global destination for culture.
Signature events in development so far include:
• Eden Project Partnership – Belfast City Council has been working in collaboration with Eden Project, based in Cornwall, to develop a partnership with Belfast. It will explore our relationship with nature and the climate crisis and how we re-evaluate and re-invent our urban spaces to be more sustainable and become more engaged with the natural world through creative and cultural interventions. Throughout 2024, Eden, together with local project partners, will deliver a series of city centre and neighbourhood interventions across Belfast focussed on greening and growing with local communities.
• Public art, inspired by nature – Council is also working in collaboration with Oliver Jeffers, the Nerve Centre and the Eden Project on research and development around the potential for public art installations in Belfast city centre in April/May 2024. These will be based on the themes of nature, power and a greener city and highlight the importance of sustainability in the Belfast’s future development and growth.
• Maritime-inspired events – a renewed focus on the River Lagan, highlighting our maritime heritage and re-engaging our people with the river, during summer and winter 2024.
• Maritime-themed concepts under development include a river pavilion, a mass boat-building project and beer and bread brewing activities, marking the city's origins and connections with the River Farset.
• Black Mountain Shared Space guerilla gardening project with creative lead Eileen McClory - an ambitious large-scale, multi-layered, multi-artform and multi-event project throughout 2024. It aims to rewild peace walls in west Belfast into vibrant, inclusive, vertical gardens for the future, through dance, storytelling and gardening, while inspiring civic pride and activism within local communities.
• Celebrating the International Decade of African Descent - Kwame Daniels and Bounce Culture will present an immersive music event as a finale to a city-wide engagement project, inspired by Frederick Douglass' famous quote about feeling at home in Belfast during his time here in 1800s.
• Immersive Experience at Thompson Dry Dock – developed in partnership with architect Henry Sykes and Three’s Theatre Company, this spectacle event in late summer/early autumn 2024 will combine light, shadow, colour and sound and take place in the iconic dock where the Titanic was launched. 40 feet below sea level, it will invite the audience to participate and experience the world around them from a different perspective.
• City of Music event – a major event in autumn 2024, celebrating Belfast's local music scene and highlighting our UNESCO City of Music designation.
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Northern Ireland WeatherThis Evening and Tonight:Rain clearing away east by early evening with some clear spells but a few showers likely to affect the North coast and other areas towards dawn, remaining breezy and mild overnight. Minimum temperature 9 °C.
