Belfast Maritime - Participative Arts
CLIENT - Belfast City Council
We were appointed by Belfast City Council to develop a maritime focused participative arts programme to complement the Belfast Maritime Festival (2025). We worked with students, residents and artists and together we created some interesting things…
We worked with textile and fashion students from Belfast Met who used their skills to create a beautiful installation of 144 jellyfish made from recycled materials, for the Festival. Facilitated by Ali Fell. Installed by Potato Bred NI.
We worked with residents who took part in storytelling sessions, sharing memories and experiences of the Sailortown area. These stories were used by Currach Circus to create a beautiful piece of choreography entitled ‘Ship/Shape’. Performed during the Festival, it was an exploration of community, resilience and joy, and a reminder of the importance of solidarity and the power of grassroots.
We engaged with passers-by, asking them about their experience of the Maritime Mile. Residents, commuters and tourists shared their thoughts with us and we turned that into a brief for artists taking part in a Street Art Jam during the Festival:
“This place is constantly shifting, changing with each new tide. New buildings rising up out of the mud, business to be done, a background hum of industry and trade. People visiting, commuting, walking and cycling, moving through.
And yet there are little ripples and eddies and pools, on the edges and in between, where something else is happening. There is quiet here too, space to breathe, rest a while. Get curious and you’ll see people aren’t just moving through, they’re moving in, finding belonging, making friends. They’re learning, creating, playing, experimenting, and chatting over a cuppa.
This is ‘new’ Belfast.” Feeling its way into the future, not quite certain what it is just yet. Old and new rub shoulders, sometimes uncomfortably, each asking questions of the other. Whose eyes should we choose to see this place through? The Titanic men, the tourists, the teens, or the gulls?"
Street Art Jam Artists: Danni Simpson, FENZ, Lost Lines, Conor McClure, HMC, Ana Fish, Zippy, KVLR, Imogen Donegan and FGB.
