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Belfast 2024 was our city’s largest cultural programme to date, celebrating home-grown creativity featuring new and exciting events, theatre, music, and art developed through innovative co-design and partnership models with a wide range of city stakeholders, the creative and cultural sector, and the citizens of Belfast - all founded in a belief and a commitment from us that creativity, sustainability, collaboration, partnership and people should be at the heart of the city’s development.
Our vision for the year was to create a legacy of better understanding our identity, our relationships with each other and our place in the world through creative and cultural interventions and experiences.
Belfast 2024 was a core strategic aim of the city’s Cultural Strategy A City Imagining 2020-30 and has directly delivered on its targets and ambitions as well as supporting several of our cross-cutting strategic priorities included in:
Belfast’s Cultural Strategy, A City Imagining 2020-2030, launched in April 2020, was developed with the people of Belfast and places culture and creativity at the heart of civic development. The Belfast 2024 programme ensured we stayed true to the themes of the cultural strategy, supporting the vision to build capacity for the creative and cultural sector, as well as our citizens’ own creative agency and raising Belfast’s reputation as a cultural destination nationally and internationally. The core programme was built from our Open Call to the city to commission projects based on the themes of our People, Place and Planet. We also built on our cultural partnerships to deliver projects with BBC NI, Eden Project, Oliver Jeffers, Nerve Centre, National Lottery Heritage Fund and British Council. We were honoured to welcome the internationally acclaimed Little Amal project, to celebrate Belfast’s City of Sanctuary status.
Watch our video about Belfast 2024. It plays for one minute and 31 seconds.
This table shows all of the Belfast 2024 projects.
|
Project name |
Project detail |
|---|---|
|
Bank of Ideas by Belfast City Council |
The Bank of Ideas was a new initiative by Belfast 2024 that enabled the people of Belfast to propose and collectively decide on creative projects for our city through participatory budgeting. 93 ideas were presented to the public at a Voting Day in City Hall, with over 2000 voters deciding what to take forward. We funded 28 projects that took place in communities and neighbourhoods right across Belfast. |
|
Safari in the City by Wild Belfast |
Safari in the City celebrated Belfast’s biodiversity with a programme of events, nature walks and art installations to unveil the joy and importance of wildlife in our city. |
|
9ft in Common by Studio idir and Starling Start Consortium |
Manifesto for the Alleyways was a large scale, city wide collaborative investigation into the creative potential for Belfast’s alleyways for growing, making, occupying and connecting. |
|
Water Works by PS2 |
Water Works reimagined and celebrated Belfast’s maritime traditions with city wide events, workshops and the building of thousands of boats including life size skiffs, milk bottle rafts, coke can dinghies and shoebox yachts culminating in a day of celebration along the River Lagan. |
|
Show Some Love Green House by Another World Belfast, CIC |
Show Some Love Green House is a collaborative artist studio, sustainable fashion hub, creative shared space, inclusive community workshops and events venue housed on Victoria Street in our city centre – all welcome to call in and take part. |
|
Little Amal by the Walk Productions and Arts Ekta |
One little girl, one giant hope. Little Amal, a 12-foot puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee child arrived in Belfast on 16 May 2024 and took a very special and spectacular journey across the city for four days filled with celebrations, performance and symbolic moments. |
|
Seen |
Seen was a special outdoor exhibition coinciding with Little Amal’s visit to our city shining a light on the stories of society’s most vulnerable from Oliver Jeffers Studio, Anaka’s Women’s Collective, Participation and the Practice of Rights (PPR) and South Belfast MLA Kate Nicholl. |
|
DRIFT by OGU Architects and MMAS with Matilde Meireles |
A fusion of experimental architecture and art. DRIFT, a new river pontoon, took a journey down the river Lagan with two stops at Stanmillis Weir and the Waterfront. Collecting stories and exploring ideas on the journey, DRIFT hosted events including movie nights, stargazing, yoga and more and a place where visitors could enjoy the sounds and sights of the River Lagan. |
|
ROOTS by Eileen McClory, Off The Rails Dance Company and Black Mountain Shared Space |
ROOTS created by a dynamic collective of artists and expert gardeners transformed newly opened Black Mountain Shared Space’s outdoor site into an interactive community garden, creating space to grow, dance, and dream. The project culminated in mesmerising live performances amid the flourishing garden in August, and an immersive audio trail installation throughout autumn. |
|
Conflicting Narratives |
Over a series of workshops, performances and discussions, Conflicting Narratives offered specialist training opportunities for practitioners working in the arts and conflict sphere. Hosted by Kabosh Theatre Company for Feile An Phobail participants worked with internationally recognised experts to develop their artistic practice in relation to conflict and reconciliation. |
|
Midsummer at the Lyric |
In July 2024, an outdoor spectacle took hold of people's imaginations with an adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream on a bespoke purpose-built stage outside The Lyric Theatre on the banks of the River Lagan. The stunning performance blew audiences away with a fun, powerful and truly unique take on this classic play. In the weeks leading up to the sell out five shows, The Lyric engaged with the local community and hosted a community fun day with workshops, arts, dance and music for the whole family. |
|
Nobodaddy |
Nobodaddy, a large-scale, ambitious, dance and theatre spectacle premiered in Belfast in September 2024. A momentous moment for Belfast as the performance went on to have sell out shows touring to Dublin and London. Nobodaddy, is a new and unique work by choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan and Teaċ Daṁsa, bringing together familiar and new collaborators in Ireland’s West Kerry Gaeltacht. |
|
Nothing |
The Nothing project included ‘Nothing Day’ the first ever Belfast wide celebration for Nothing on Monday 4 November. The team invited people to rest, think and dream and free themselves from any agenda allowing space to meet, think and be inspired. |
|
The Wiggle Room |
Wiggle Room, by Boom Clap Play, fused digital technology with physical play, creating an immersive playroom taking real time reactions from people’s movement, allowing visitors to run wild with their imagination. Hosted at The MAC for three months, Wiggle Room was co-designed with children across Belfast with Playboard NI and Big Motive as partners, it showed us the future of digital play. |
|
Sound Links |
On International Peace Day 2024, Townsend Street transformed into a space of celebration for the whole community to enjoy. Ulster Orchestra are now based in the area and worked with the local community and businesses to create a special celebration of their neighbourhood. Live music, dance, workshops, markets and food made for a joyous day for all ages to enjoy. A finale to the day came with the premiere of three new music performances with the Orchestra , inspired by local stories, from composers Rory Friers, Una Monaghan and Jamie Thompson in Townsend street church. |
|
Shadowdock |
As the darker evenings of autumn 2024 appeared, our docks came alive at sunset, making the unimaginable possible with the spectacular immersive event Shadowdock. |
|
North Star |
A live music spectacle transported us from 1845 to 2024. This groundbreaking immersive live music performance inspired by Frederick Douglass’s landmark Belfast speech in 1845 In his words, “wherever else I feel myself to be a stranger, I will remember I have a home in Belfast.” Nearly 100 Belfast school pupils contributed to this extraordinary blend of music, art, and literature, celebrating Black culture and Douglass’s legacy. North Star delivered an emotional and inspiring exploration and celebration of our city’s black culture and heritage. |
|
Touch, Hear, Feel |
Audiences enjoyed a unique dance performance from a new perspective engaging with all their senses to understand the world around us. Touch, Hear, Feel was created by visually impaired communities and led by artist Helen Hall, exploring performance through fabrics, textures, light, music and audio narratives. |
|
Red Sky at Night |
Across a weekend showcase, six unique art installations as part of the Red Sky at Night commission with Household in partnership with British Council NI took place across Belfast. This unique artist residency programme culminated in a series of special installations created by international artists including an interactive gaming experience inspired by architecture and light at Carlisle Memorial Church; sound, photography and sculpture at Botanic Gardens Palm House; textile and sound installation at Riddel’s Warehouse and more. |
|
The Hearth |
After months of gathering footage with over 300 participants, The Hearth film premiered to a sold out audience at Cineworld on 12 December. This unique, funny and heartwarming 75-minute feature film tells our city’s stories, thoughts and dreams, everyday conversations, aspirations for the future and presents a self-portrait of Belfast in 2024. This film premiere was so special for the whole team involved and more so for the participants in the film who were there on the night celebrating with hosts Julian Simmons and Tara-Lynne O’Neill. |
|
Are You On The Bus? |
This ground-breaking collaboration presented by Outburst Arts and Kabosh Theatre Company included a series of events to uncover stories and moments from Belfast’s queer past and imagine what the future could hold. The project included with a transformational site specific performance Suspect Device held on a vintage Ulsterbus parked up at Belfast Castle to sell out audiences in November. Inspired by Wilma Creith, one of the first publicly trans women in Belfast, the performance on the bus guided people through the past to the present day and explored how things have changed for queer people living in Belfast. |
|
Eco Arcade |
Artist Robin Price teamed up with young minds and local ecologists from the National Trust to create an interactive experience that merges gaming, technology and climate awareness creating a spectacular largescale outdoor game that will be live across the city in autumn 2025. |
|
Our Stories Festival |
Our Stories Festival was a weekend packed with various events and experiences exploring the themes of our people, our place and our planet delivered in partnership with Belfast Stories’ public consultation. With over 17 events including local artists, activists and international creatives - audiences were treated to talks and conversations, workshops, readings and stories, sustainable fashion and lots more with special guests including Chris Packham, Oliver Jeffers, Hannah Peel and Martin Green MBE. We explored topics such as the climate crisis, sustainability and the importance of the arts and culture for our city’s future. The whole weekend was thought provoking and inspiring. |
There were several key partners who supported this programme. Some helped to deliver the cultural programme, some were funders or in-kind supporters, and some were strategic collaborators.
The Belfast 2024 programme has already been recognised as best practice and shortlisted for awards by local and international bodies, including:
In spring 2025, we will share feedback from the Belfast 2024 programme on this page. Some of the initial comments about the programme include:
‘I shall remember those moments for rest of my life’.
‘I learned so much about the culture of our city and felt connected to the people around me’
‘Truly a world-class event of excellence.’
‘Discovered a brand-new venue in a part of Belfast I really don't know.’
For more information and advice, get in touch.
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