Belfast

Tall Ships 1991 – “great spectacularity” that could have turned M2 into a carpark #20YearRule

| Readers 1302

INTERVIEW WITH Sir Richard Needham about the Tall Ships which first visited Belfast back in July 1991. It was the first large-scale event expected to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors each day. Recently released government papers show that extra car parking spaces were needed, and there was a suggestion that the M2 could be used for parking.

In praise of Ulster’s heartbeat – the Lambeg drum

| Readers 3845

  I don’t think anything better defines the Twelfth for me than the sight and the sound of a well-played Lambeg drum. Pun intended, but the oul Lambeg is hard to beat. I’ll be honest, though. The first time I heard a Lambeg as a child – at a Twelfth parade in Moira if I recall correctly – I must have jumped so high out of my skin that I could have touched the top of arch. But gradually, as …

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Is cannabis, a relatively safe drug in adults, more toxic in teenagers?

| Readers 1268

The mayhem an estimated 900 troubled youths impose on the West Belfast community – a community of 100,000 souls – is staggering according to a N. Ireland Assembly report which is putting in place a support programme to turn lives around.  These individuals, mostly males, mostly in their late teens and early twenties, act antisocially which is a problem yes but the real worry is that, for a small but significant number at least, self-harm and suicide is a real …

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The last bastion of Ulster Unionism in Belfast is teetering on the brink…

| Readers 3690

At it’s zenith – possibly due to what some might call the electoral dividends of delivering peace in Northern Ireland – the UUP polled 25,272 across the 4 Belfast Constituencies, polling 9,620 and 9,533 in East and South Belfast respectively. However, by 2007, the UUP had shed over 10,000 votes in the Belfast Area with sharp declines in East and South Belfast bringing the vote share across Belfast to 15,145. Just last May, the UUP share had fallen to it’s …

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Join us for our Slugger Sessions on Transforming Belfast

| Readers 884

  Belfast has been transformed over the last decade. The once desolate Cathedral Quarter is now attracting thousands of revelers every week. The Titanic Quarter is seeing massive investment by companies overseas and local. It seems every other day a new bar or restaurant is popping up. But we can do more. Belfast city centre has one of the lowest occupancy rates of any city in the UK or Ireland. How do we attract people to live in the city …

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Confident. Ambitious. Prosperous. Distinctive. Launch of Successful Belfast.

| Readers 678

Confident. Ambitious. Prosperous. Distinctive. Launch of Successful Belfast.
by Allan LEONARD for Northern Ireland Foundation
27 October 2016

Walking past the students at their tabletops, working on their assignments with mock constructions at the School of Architecture at the Ulster University Belfast campus, there was no mistaking that I found the venue for the launch event for Successful Belfast, described in an advance notice by founding director of Belfast Buildings Trust, Ms Fionnuala Jay-O’Boyle, as “a city-focused think-tank”.

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Presbyterian Moderator ignites debate on bonfires

| Readers 1695

The Presbyterian Moderator, Rt Rev Dr Frank Sellar, delivered the 2016 Ulster University Chaplaincy lecture last night. Speaking under the title of “A City of Hope, Leadership and Compassion”, his comments on bonfires attracted a lot of attention this morning.

“I’m trying not to take The Fall personally.”

| Readers 1704

Guardian TV critic Stuart Heritage with a nail on head review of the “dead dog of a show” that The Fall became.  From the Guardian review Even by most recent standards, The Fall was dire this year. Now that it’s done, and Paul Spector is dead and Stella Gibson is back enigmatically muttering like a woman who lost her keys, it’s hard to fathom why anyone was ever excited about this dreary puddle of a show in the first place. …

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City council recommends no free Christmas parking

| Readers 985

This is a rare post from myself that is almost entirely from the perspective of being a motorist. As Belfast City Council’s Growth and Regeneration committee recommends that they do not offer free parking after 6pm or on Saturdays coming up to Christmas, my first reaction is that in fact we are only really discussing one thing: free parking on a Saturday. But what about parking for late night shopping?  Well, only three council car parks charge after 6pm – …

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Belfast through the eyes of an outsider looks like a really cool place…

| Readers 1587

Yesterday I was at the Power of Video Conference held at the shiny new Waterfront extension. As you may have guessed from the title, it was all about using video online. Video can be enormously popular online. The video below was put on our Facebook page a few months ago and so far over a million people have watched it. Bonkers.   For those of us over a certain age the whole Youtube stars thing has probably passed us by. In …

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Before Xchange Summer School: What quarters make your Belfast?

| Readers 540

Next week will see the doors opening on this year’s Xchange Summer School and the start of conversations including a section of the event set aside to consider whether Belfast is a “City of Seven Quarters”. The event, through a panel discussion taking stock of the buildings around us in Belfast 2016, is likely to look at issues such as heritage versus the economic benefits of new buildings and well as the impact of conflict not to mention ask if …

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Imagining Belfast as a cultural commons…

| Readers 511

“What would Belfast look like, sound like, feel like, taste like, if the city was a cultural commons?” asks the event description on the Imagine Festival’s website.  It was this question that drew me to my first-ever Imagine Festival event, a so-called “conversational seminar” entitled “Imagining Belfast as a Cultural Commons,” hosted by Voluntary Arts Ireland and held at City Hall on Monday. Between the plethora of events organized for this year’s self-described “Festival of Ideas & Politics” and the …

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1987 and the day the RUC saved me from the Lancashire hot pot boys…

| Readers 2035

There was so much violence back then. That year alone saw 98 people lose their lives. Like the violence itself, the people who died came from all perceived sides in the conflict. However, almost half those who died were recorded as ‘civilians’. I was a 15 year old civilian in the summer of 1987. Despite the violence that raged around me, my life went on as normal- as normal as it could have been. Each evening, now that school was …

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A surprising mutual appreciation for Pink Floyd at the end of a gun…

| Readers 1133

Funny the things you notice when someone is standing in front of you with a gun. On this particular occasion (because there were many) I noticed three things. Firstly, this person was about the same age as me. Secondly, he looked really pissed off. Thirdly, and I don’t know why I looked at his hands-oh yeah, he was carrying a gun that was pointed kinda in my direction in his hands- I noticed that he had tattoos across his knuckles. …

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Listening to the psychogeography of Belfast

| Readers 813

One of the final events of the Four Corners Festival was a discussion on what was described as the psychogeography of the city of Belfast. A panel of four — with one connected via a video call — ruminated on their walking through the streets, along borders and through them, sharing their perspectives to an audience of about two dozen gathered at the freshly opened Girdwood Community Hub. The question to answer was what can we learn about a city …

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Protestant Identity, Vulnerability and Bonfires.

| Readers 2787

Chris Jenkins writes for us about his experiences touring some bonfires last summer…. The cameraman runs up towards the bonfire. The wooden pallets tower over him. Teenagers begin to light the colossal structure with flaming torches. “He’s gone too close”, I think straight away. The fire started to move quickly, and the young men lighting it stayed a step ahead, using their torches to light the petrol in the middle of the wooden structure. One of the teenagers who we …

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