Ahead of next week’s packed programme, Imagine! festival are calling for your ideas to imagine a better post-pandemic Belfast. How would you Build Belfast Back Better? You can submit up to three ideas that reimagine the city in the face of the pandemic and the challenges presented by Brexit, increased poverty, loneliness and mental health issues.
A quick rummage through the Imagine! Belfast programme coming up between 22–28 March. Under the strapline of The State of Us, there’ll be exhibitions, workshops, lectures, film, comedy, music, spoken word, lectures, theatre and quizzes. Voices from at home and abroad. The festival isn’t afraid to challenge. It doesn’t expect participants to agree with everything that is said. It’s about making people think. Widening their horizons. Broadening their understanding. Developing their empathy. Helping them figure out why – and if – they truly believe the hunches and biases they may have been living with for a lifetime.
Today and tomorrow there are 3 online webinars around improving the urban environment in North Belfast. If you are free they should be an interesting watch. Reconnecting North Belfast to the river Tuesday 2nd March 2-4 pm The webinar introduces the alternative urban solution evolved for North Belfast and the road interchange. Tony Fretton – architect London Terri McKeown – Sailortown Regeneration Mary Black – CBE – Public Health professional Michael McGarry – architect Professor QUB Ken Sterrett – retired QUB planner Intro …
St. Valentine’s Day, 2021, and my house is creaking as it slowly reverts to type – a square wooden box with wooden walls, wooden floors and a wooden staircase – after the trials of last night’s earthquake. 200km from the temblor’s epicentre, knickknacks fell off shelves, ceiling lamps pendulated and pulses raced. At Magnitude 6 for us, it was our strongest quake ever, having missed the big one in March 2011. Rugby World Cup 2019, and our windows were shuttered …
One of the (many) disappointing realisations that came to pass during the Time of Covid is just how many people don’t like being in their own home for too long. The place where they’ve chosen to live (or at least settled into). The place where they raise their families or invite their friends round. As such, people all over Europe were almost literally running for the hills (or forests or cottages or seaside houses) in order to get away from …
It’s the 3rd of January. It’s 4.25pm. I’m standing in the garden looking up to the sky and it’s still daylight. The simple stretch of daylight minute by minute, day by day is enough to cheer me. January always feels like the beginning for me, not because of the turn of the calendar or New Year Resolutions (I don’t believe in them) but because the darkest days of winter are behind me and I can look forward to days lengthening …
One of my ways of staying sane throughout this pandemic is going out for a daily walk. It is free, it keeps you fit and it good for your mental health. What’s not to like? A lot of people have the same idea and all our outdoor facilities are full of people enjoying the great outdoors. We are very lucky here in Northern Ireland that we have many beautiful places to visit right on our doorstep. Over the past few …
My two hives are quiet, they’re like damp, derelict buildings. Winter is a constant cycle of helpless concern for beekeepers. Several times a week I put my coat on and take a hot cup of coffee outside and watch until I drink my cup dry. If I’m lucky I see at least one bee return to a hive. A single bee is enough to reassure me that a colony is still alive and I go happily about my life for …
You may have seen the photo above on social media. It shows the old entrance to Queen’s University before it was removed to make the entrance suitable for cars. Throughout the world, there are very few places that have been improved by building massive roads through them. Here are some old photos of Donegal Street, Carlisle Circus and Clifton St before somebody had the bright idea to run the Westlink through them. When you look at some of the terrible …
A friend died last Sunday, a past neighbour, someone who was kind to us when we were impossibly young and new to married life. He’d been ill and wasn’t going to get better, but still, the human brain finds death difficult to compute. No matter the age or circumstance, it always feels too soon. Sorrow cuts through the heart like a flesh wound. We watched his coffin, with its effervescent floral haul, as it was lowered into the earth. The …
Recent years have been a remarkable increase in interest in our environment. TV programmes such as The Blue Planet and Planet Earth have been credited as increasing our awareness of the environment and even changing our behaviour. From cutting back on meat consumption to ditching single-use plastics, many of us have changed our lifestyles. While there are many ways in which our behaviour affects the environment, the production and consumption of food and drink has a strong impact. Some estimates …
Over half of the world’s population lack safely managed sanitation services, while at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces (WHO, 2017). This causes diarrhoeal disease which is responsible for the death of around half a million children under the age of 5 each year (WHO, 2017). Without the adequate water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) conditions in place, risks of contamination are everywhere, and practices that pose a risk to health become highly prevalent. Examples …
We have three Red Maple trees in our garden. They flame skyward like balls of luminescent fire. They’re claret stars grounded in the earth. The leaves are not a uniform red, similar to how blood from a deep cut differs from a surface wound. They are deep berry red, orange-red, burnt sienna and crimson. When I remember to notice them, I can’t help but stop and stare. An autumn bee will live three times as long as a summer bee. …
I have a tree growing in my garden christened the ‘tree of love’. It was planted as two small saplings and when the bark was young and still flexible, I twisted their skinny limbs around each other and left them to it. Over the past couple of years, with the amount of hugging that’s gone on, the saplings have merged into one and in so doing have become a talking point for passing walkers on our country road. People ask …
By Dr Patrice Cairns, Policy Manager, RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors). You can follow her on Twitter. This year, for many, their home has become not only their shelter but a place of work, of homeschooling, of social space and respite. It can be assumed that there is undoubtfully now a greater appreciation of the intrinsic link between wellbeing and improved indoor health. However, if we spend more time at home, we will typically use more energy. The built …
Interesting development earlier this week as Nichola Mallon approved the new North-South interconnector from Tyrone to Meath, not least because of the cacophony of noise arising not just from rivals but even from within her own party. The BBC reports… The approval is for the building of a single circuit 400kV electricity line consisting of 102 towers over 34.1kms in length from Moy in County Tyrone to Crossreagh in County Armagh. The first application was lodged on 15th December 2009. …
2020 has not been a good year for the McCausland family. Firstly they own Value Cabs, which has been hit hard by COVID, then they open up a new car park just as the city has record low levels of commuters. I am sure all of you working from home really miss having to pay £20 a day to park in Belfast. Still, they have been in business over 100 years so I imagine this too shall pass for them. …
Ian Humphreys is the Chief Executive of Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful. The Reset is an apt description for the type of change that the COVID-19 pandemic has presented to us over the past six months. Our lives have been changed and priorities re-evaluated as we grapple with an uncertain future. For the environment sector, we have long argued (perhaps too meekly) for a new way of doing things. Our lifestyle of increasing carbon emissions and ignoring the consequences of waste …
The day is dull, it can’t decide whether to rain, or not. The air is autumn cool, the blooms of summer have faded, there’s a ‘last orders’ feeling before winter. I’m hunkered down, underneath the big fir tree on the edge of our wet lawn half a metre from my first hive entrance. I’ve just left my youngest off at school for the first time in five months. He turned nine in July and takes his extra year into the …
With plans to form a Shared Island unit in the Taoiseach’s Office there will be opportunities for Dublin’s new coalition government to select a number of flagship projects that can form part of a transformative legacy. One that can contribute significantly to the re-imagination of our island is a trans-border university in the North West. The region could lead the way in both pedagogical and ecological innovation as we prepare to ‘Build Back Better’ to address the impacts of both …
