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programme

Searching for something can be a difficult process. Looking for something hidden for so long can be an impossible task. When the things that you’re seeking involve trust, confidence and mutual respect, the challenge can be even greater. But, if you approach the search creatively, sensitively and methodically, you stand a better chance of success. Using the arts can provide fun, innovative and challenging ways for all of us to explore our own lives and find or even re-discover, what makes us unique.

Community art is a process of harnessing the transformative power of original artistic expression and producing a range of outcomes: social, cultural and environmental. Looked at politically, socially, culturally and/or economically, community arts aim to establish and maximise inclusive ways of working, providing an opportunity for communities and their participants to continue to find ways to develop their own skills as artists and for artists to explore ways of transferring those skills. Through this process, community arts aim to maximise the access, participation, authorship and ownership in collective arts practice.

Belfast is an old historic city, so why New Belfast?

We support the transformation that we insist is happening in the city. Any recent visitor to Belfast can see that physical change. New shops and offices are springing up and for many, a new sense of prosperity may be emerging, but there are still worryingly high levels of deprivation in the city and many who are marginalised by circumstance – where they come from, how they look, what they believe in, what they can or can’t do.

Here at New Belfast Community Arts Initiative, we strive to offer, communities and individuals, real opportunities to engage with each other through the arts using film, photography, fashion, sculpture, visual art, poetry, creative writing, multimedia, carnival arts, dance, drama, music, mural making, whatever!

Mission, Vision, Values

New Belfast has been painstakingly developing the capacity of groups to engage with each other, to better communicate their shared humanity and common needs/aspirations.

New Belfast provides innovative cross-community arts projects which bring together arts organisations and individuals on projects which:

  • are rooted in the local community,
  • are responsive to local needs and interests
  • have a city-wide dimension,
  • provide a platform for dialogue through new ways of being and perceiving, leading to the awareness of a shared humanity
  • are focused on some of the most badly affected and socially disadvantaged communities in Belfast,
  • contribute to the social, economic and cultural regeneration of Belfast
  • promote employment for and the role of local artists in the community as contributors to personal and community self-esteem and empowerment

With over 2,500 participants taking part in projects every year, we work in communities throughout the city; north, south, east and west, all drawn from New TSN/Section 75 data and beyond. These groups are nominated by our unique consortium which consists of 9 partner organisations; Arts for All, Community Arts Forum, Cult úrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities, North Belfast Communities in Action, Open Arts, Greater Shankill Partnership Board, South Belfast Cultural Society and Upper Springfield Youth Network. This allows us to respond directly to local organisations on the ground. In addition to this we work with up to 65 schools through our Poetry In Motion Schools Project.

New Belfast aims to address the issues of:

  • Reconciliation between communities
  • Sharing skills and resources
  • Creating the structures of a New Belfast through the medium of community arts.
  • Regenerating communities in areas of disadvantage

We are committed to the promotion of best practice, raising the profile of community arts in Belfast and celebrating the innate talent within our historic city, providing a means for citizens at the margins to express their lives and concerns to the wider city, offering a living social dialogue to inform and renew Belfast.

Our aim is to maintain a core programme targeting the following:

(I)Those with weak infra-structure
(II)Those specified by central and local government new TSN strategies

We have a particular focus on:

a. young people
b. women
c. people with a disability
d. members of the LGBT (lesbian/gay/bi-sexual/trans-sexual) community
e. ethnic minorities

We strive to achieve this by:

  • linking through a consortium of arts/social associations and organisations and therefore reflecting the totality of experience affecting the citizens of Belfast
  • bridging community division through arts interventions
  • providing free of charge arts facilitation to core client groups at the point of delivery
  • bonding all aspects of the programme into a unified social dialogue through the arts
  • working with all skills levels, all traditions, sexualities, ethnicities and abilities through tailored training packages
  • offering a working and training route for all graduate and community artists
  • innovating new community art practices such as:
    • offering placements and secondments to New Deal clients
    • offering access to employment through our mentoring of new community artists to all arts graduates and those with the necessary skills from the community
    • offering established professional artists the opportunity to engage with community
    • administrating projects for community groups or organisations that lack the necessary capacity or know-how
    • offering our office as a meeting place for artists and arts organisations without premises
    • developing linkage with a wide range of non arts organisations and agencies
    • consulting and assisting communities to interface with governmental arts and regeneration programmes

New Belfast is always striving to enhance its ability to offer creative opportunities. Over the last seven years, New Belfast has grown from strength to strength. The key to maintaining the impact of this work is momentum. If we are to build meaningfully from one programme to the next, we require continued support, from communities, from funders and from artists.

Conor Shields, Programme Director