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Belfast 2024 is an ambitious cultural celebration for our city. It will present a wide-ranging programme of creative local projects, events and city initiatives in 2024 - made by the people of Belfast for the people of Belfast.
Belfast 2024 emerged from the large-scale engagement process that formed part of Belfast’s bid for European City of Culture in 2018. It’s also a key aim of our cultural strategy, A City Imagining 2020-2030.
We had planned to host this home-grown year of culture in 2023. But we were held back by the pandemic and turned our ambitions to 2024. We believe that culture will be a core part of Belfast’s recovery and that investing in our creative sector is essential - not just delivering on the ambition for Belfast 2024, but to help us build back better and become more sustainable.
As well as our cultural strategy, the ambitions of Belfast 2024 deliver on the aims of our tourism plan, the Belfast Agenda, A Bolder Vision for Belfast and the Belfast City Centre Regeneration and Investment Strategy. It will also deliver on ambitions of the Resilience strategy and partnership development with the Belfast Stories (link opens in new window) project.
Belfast 2024 will support activities that create new connections. It aims to bring people together to think, explore and create in new ways. It will be made up of local and international commissions and partnerships. The programme has a focus on cross-sector working and making good use of public space.
Belfast 2024 is founded in our belief and commitment that culture, sustainability, collaboration, partnership and people should be at the heart of the city’s decision-making and development.
By focusing on these areas together, we aim to:
For more information, email Belfast2024@belfastcity.gov.uk.
This is a list of key projects which are currently in development across Belfast and will form a central part of the overall Belfast 2024 programme.
| Lead organisation or artist | Short description |
|---|---|
| An Droichead and Michael Keegan Dolan |
Mar chuid den chlár BéalFeirste 2024, cruthóidh An Droichead aagus Teaċ Daṁsa píosa amharclannaíochta ildisciplíneach úr faoi stiúir Michael Keegan Dolan, píosa ina a bheas damhsa, ceol traidisiúnta agus an Ghaeilge mar chroílár ann. An Droichead will create a new multi-disciplinary piece of dance theatre along with Teac Damsa, led by Michael Keegan Dolan. The new work will combine dance with traditional Irish music and language. |
| Another World | Show Some Love Clubhouse will be a place for learning, connecting, participating with a focus on textile arts. Its purpose is to improve mental health by building empowered and connected communities. |
| Belfast Film Festival | This co-created filmmaking project between the people of Belfast, Belfast Film Festival and filmmakers will engage communities to watch, learn and create a new perspective of our city. |
| Belfast Int Arts Festival and Helen Hall | Touch, Hear, Feel is an immersive and multisensory installation created with visually impaired communities led by artist Helen Hall, that explores touch through original choreography, fabrics, audio and video narratives. |
| Boom Clap Play | The Wiggle Room will bridge the gap between the conventional playground and the realm of immersive, intellectually stimulating experiences. Where play is interwoven with the contemporary digital world. |
| So Lab Collective | Inspired by Fredrick Douglass’ time in Belfast in 1845, North Star will explore belonging through the lense of contemporary black culture asking people, what makes them feel at home in Belfast? |
| Eileen McClory | Guerrilla Walls is an ambitious large-scale, multi-artform and multi-event project. It aims to rewild peace walls into vibrant, inclusive, vertical gardens for the future, through dance, storytelling and gardening. |
| Sykes Studio and Threes Three Theatre Company | Shadow Dock will be immersive experience at Thompson Dry Dock. A display of light, shadow, colour and sound, audiences will see and feel the world around them from a new perspective. |
| Jasmin Marker | Artist and Microbiologist Jasmin Marker will be merging microbiology, archaeology, visual art, music, and beer brewing to unearth the stories that connect us with Belfast’s forgotten rivers. |
| Lyric Theatre | Since The River Went on Fire will be a collaborative spectacle igniting the River Lagan; creating space for play with one of the most hidden parts of Belfast. |
| OGU and MMAS Architects | ‘Drift’ will float on and inhabit the River Lagan, opening conversation about the River Lagan’s potential to be a vital public space for the city centre. |
| Outburst Queer Arts and Kabosh Theatre Company | An ambitious collaboration of Queer Arts will explore Belfast’s queer pasts, presents, and possible futures, in search of promises kept, forgotten, and yet to be made by the city. |
| PS2 | This mass participation project will reimagine our maritime traditions for the future with citywide events, workshops, and an ambition to build 10,000 boats for Belfast. From life-size skiffs, to milk-bottle rafts, Coke can dinghies and shoebox yachts. |
| Robin Price and Johanna Leech | Artists Robin Price and Johanna Leech will work with Belfast’s young coders and local ecologists to create largescale interactive laser arcade games featuring local species affected by climate change. The games will be projected on to two Belfast buildings. It is free for any bypassers or avid gamers to get involved and play. |
| Studio idir and Starling Start consortium | 9ft in Common: A Manifesto for the Alleys is a large-scale, city-wide collaborative celebration of the creative potential of Belfast’s alleyways: for growing, making, occupying and connecting. |
| Ulster Orchestra | This collaboration with Ulster Orchestra and Townsend Enterprise Park aims to continue the revival of a fascinating but overlooked street in west Belfast with a rich history and exciting future. |
| Wild Belfast | This citizen- science project will give the opportunity for people to explore and learn about the wildlife we share in the city through creative events which will animate and bring life to urban spaces. |
Along with our specially commissioned open call projects, we have a number of signature initiatives and commissions in development that we’re presenting as part of Belfast 24.
Eden Project: Our Belfast 2024 team have been working in collaboration with Eden Project, based in Cornwall, to develop a partnership with Belfast 2024 exploring our relationship with nature, the climate crisis and how we re-evaluate and reinvent our urban spaces to be more sustainable and more engaged with our natural world through creative and cultural interventions. Eden will work with our Belfast 2024 commissions theme Planet, advising and consulting on how to maximise impact and sustainability in our nature-inspired commissions.
British Council and Household Belfast: Artists in Neighbourhoods is a joint project between Belfast 2024 and British Council. British Council’s UK in Focus programme during 2022-2023 provided partnership funding to develop a series of large-scale civic and cultural public engagement moments and anniversaries taking place across the UK. Household Belfast are curating and co-ordinating this unique project celebrating Belfast’s future 25 years on from the Good Friday agreement. There are five international artists working in residency with Belfast communities and local partners Skainos, East Side Arts, Culturlann, Duncairn Arts and Crescent Arts Centre to deliver on co-designed public realm projects within these communities and neighbourhoods throughout 2024.
We’re currently working with a wide range of opportunities with other key strategic partners such as The Walk Productions, ArtsEkta, BBC NI, Oliver Jeffers and Nerve Centre and Belfast Stories to add to our Belfast 2024 portfolio of exciting projects, initiatives and spectacle events. More information on these programmes will be revealed soon.
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