RSS newsfeed
New Belfast Community Arts Initiative is committed to supporting individuals and communities through the arts. We offer a workshop programme that provides real opportunities for growth and renewal and celebrates the innate talent within our city.
Happy New Year!
Welcome to the New Belfast Community Arts Initiative’s website and to 2010. This is a big year for New Belfast as we started our programme of community arts activity 10 years ago and so this year we celebrate over 20,000 participants moving through our programme since we began in 2000.
This year, we will add some 3,500 to that number through programmes funded by our principal funder, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council, Dept of Foreign Affairs and the International Fund for Ireland.
In the past ten years, we have seen massive physical change in Belfast and there has been undoubted community development and a narrowing of the distance between the two main traditions. But, we have also seen an unprecedented rise in racist attacks on new ethnic minority communities and indeed, there remains fear and mistrust of difference. There is still much to be done in terms of the “them and us” attitude that has prevailed here for so long.
Added to this, we have the worst global economic downturn in modern times. While our society seems to be responding with a ‘business as usual’ approach, it is clear that this year will bring massive change. With government delaying significant adjustments (it is an election year after all), the worst may yet be to come. And the communities that New Belfast works with will undoubtedly bear the brunt of any consequent upheaval.
The environment has moved up our agenda as well. With failure in Copenhagen to copper fasten the world’s commitment to addressing climate change, it is up to individuals and communities to develop our own response and to educate ourselves and the world around us as to how to conserve and protect our environment.
Whilst many think that, at such a difficult economic time, the arts are a luxury, the reality is that we have to come together as communities to offer each other the security of friendship and support through difficult periods but also seek creative ways to deal with the difficulties that hamper our communities’ ability to respond positively to opportunity or even threat. Community arts can be a tremendous bridge between and within communities and can act as a great galvaniser of community spirit and camaraderie. It offers new ways of looking at people and situations, it develops our confidence when it is low; it offers artistic challenges and new ways back into training and employment. It is also fun. Each art piece created is as unique as the person or community that created it. In the world of applied arts, any subject can be viewed through the prism of creativity, offering new insights and perhaps solutions.
New Belfast will be addressing all these concerns through our programme of community arts workshops and events. We will give professional support to communities to develop themselves using arts as a means to foster new friendships and ideas. Keep an eye on our website for events in your area.
On behalf of all the staff, management board, artists and volunteers, may I wish you a Happy and Creative New Year.
Conor Shields, Programme Director
Art confronts life, allowing it to stop and perhaps change direction
~ Antony Gormley
We live in a fractured world. I've always seen it as my role as an artist to attempt to make wholeness.
There is something about opening one's heart to the possibilities that one doesn't even truly or readily know are there
~ Anish Kapoor
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen
~ Leonardo da Vinci
The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep
~ Paul Strand
All art requires courage
~ Anne Tucker
What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit
~ John Updike
My attitude towards drawing is not necessarily about drawing. It's about making the best kind of image I can make, it's about talking as clearly as I can
~ Jim Dine