ARTS ROUND-UP

INTERCULTURAL ARTISTS SHOWCASE

Terra Nova Productions, Northern Ireland’s intercultural theatre company creating culturally diverse, professional and community-led projects for over 13 years, has been working with some of Northern Ireland’s most exciting freelance artists, from diverse backgrounds, throughout the lockdowns. The company is delighted to announce that the fi rst set of work developed by the artists is ready to view and will be released weekly online until 31st March. Supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Organisations Emergency Programme, this project provides a platform to showcase artists who, through various art forms, explore and highlight a range of current issues including the impact of the pandemic, family separation and loss, social justice and #BlackLivesMatter. The short pieces are wide ranging in style and are based on the artist’s investigations. They include everything from how languages other than English may infl uence the performance of Shakespeare, intimate storytelling, to compelling work about injustice and reparations and a piece capturing the sound of mornings all across the globe.

The commissioned pieces will be released weekly online until 31st March and are free to view. For details visit www.terranovaproductions.net

Terra Nova Productions participating artists: Katie Varga, Bryony Randall, Michelle AshwoodStewart, Jamal Franklin, Raquel McKee, Rosa Stourac McCreery, Raoul Brand, Shannon Yee, Michelle Yim.

OUR SONGS, OUR PLACE

The Ulster Orchestra is delighted to announce the release of a new recording, Our Songs, Our Place, featuring nine songs by local songwriters developed through the Orchestra’s Your Song Now project.

With the live music industry thrown into disarray with the COVID-19 restrictions closing venues across the country, musicians have been forced to fi nd new ways to express their creativity. Composer and arranger Paul Campbell approached the Ulster Orchestra in April 2020 with the idea for a project that sought to curate a musical response to the fi rst COVID-19 lockdown.

This became the Your Song Now project, which invited songwriters at any stage of their career to submit a song that spoke of their life and experience of the lockdown. From 69 entries, nine songwriters were selected to work on their songs with mentors Duke Special (2007 Choice Music Prize nominee), Kitt Philippa (NI Music Award Best Album winner in 2020) and Paul Campbell, culminating in this recording, an album that crosses genres and generations, while exploring the common experience of lockdown and how it has changed all our lives.

Speaking of the album, Paul Campbell said: “In the midst of all that’s conspired to keep us apart for many months now, the music we make is a gift - inspiring us, providing us with deeper connections and closer community. Producing Our Songs Our Place, with such a wealth of local talent surrounded by the sublime sounds of the Ulster Orchestra, has been a truly overwhelming experience for me personally. These songs are saturated with real life - our lives - and I hope that the album might remind us of all that’s precious about these challenging times, long after they’ve become a distant memory.”

Our Songs, Our Place is available for purchase digitally and in CD format from: www.ulsterorchestra.org.uk/news/ oursongsourplace/

IN RESONANCE

In Resonance, an exhibition by Saffron Monks-Smith, will run from 3-27 March at www.artisann.org.

This online exhibition from ArtisAnn Gallery focuses on life that could have been, depicting a contrast between abandoned rural houses and urban street-lit locations of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The paintings attempt to breathe new life into places that no longer harbour human life – where reality and imagination cross paths - where the present and the past strangely exist all in one space. These paintings attempt to conceal and reveal the life that could have lived within these buildings whilst showing the bustling urban streets as somewhere ghostly and isolated.

Saffron Monks-Smith graduated with a Masters in Fine Art from Ulster University in June 2020 and is now a member of Arcade Studios, Belfast. Her practice in printmaking during her undergraduate degree awarded her the Belfast Print Workshop Membership in 2015 as well as the Seacourt Print Workshop Graduate Award in 2018.

Now focusing on painting, Saffron has expanded on her ideas of memory and atmosphere through her nocturnal urban and suburban landscapes. In her most recent body of work for the ArtisAnn Emerging Artist Exhibition of 2020, her work offered a play between light and dark, absence and presence through the everyday, mundane and often nocturnal surroundings.

The exhibition runs at www.artisann.org from 3rd to 27th March 2021.

WEAVE X PORTVIEW

Once home to thousands of weavers, spinners and linen workers, Portview plays host to an event that captures the past life of the building and celebrates the people who used the space, with a contextual performance and celebration of culture through music and exhibition.

Organised as part of Imagine Festival 2021, a live music set infused with historic glimpses into local industrial life will weave together community, culture and creativity; unlocking the potential of such an iconic and imposing figure in the physical and social landscape of east Belfast.

Weave X Portview celebrates local industry past and present, with a bright spotlight on local artists and creatives in a contrasting but equally challenging modern landscape.

The event will premiere on 27th March 2021 on various streaming platforms.

Stay up to date on Instagram @we.ave

VITAL FUNDING FOR ARTS AND CULTURE IN NI

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland recently announced funding offers of £10,864,610, from their Stability and

Renewal Programme for Organisations

(SRPO), to support 168 cultural organisations affected as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Stability and Renewal Programme is part of the £29 million NI Executive allocation that was made to the Department for Communities to support the arts, culture,

Up Productions: Bicep Live. Photo by Tremain Gregg

heritage and language sectors which have been severely impacted by Covid-19.

The programme was specifically designed to stabilise organisations financially to prevent closure and/or to allow continued delivery of outcomes, and support renewal plans.

Some of those organisations offered SRPO funding include:

• Greater Shantallow Community Arts (GSCA), Derry~Londonderry - SRPO funding offer £84,000 • Derry Theatre Trust (The Millennium Forum), Derry~Londonderry - SRPO funding offer £103,034 • OML Belfast Limited / SSE Arena, Belfast - SRPO funding offer: £809,763 • Rockstar Logistics, Maghera - SRPO funding offer: £409,628 • Up Productions (AVA), Belfast -SRPO funding offer £207,458 • Dylan Quinn Dance Theatre, Fermanagh - SRPO funding offer £15,352 • Newcastle Community Cinema, Down- SRPO funding offer £55,366

IMMACULATE

In March 2021 Tinderbox will premiere Louise Mathews’ original and powerful new piece of missing memoirs, Immaculate, as part of E-Motion21. Due to lockdown, Tinderbox have radically re-directed their Creativity in Motion tour to a series of online creative workshops and performances. The Immaculate project comprises of a full recording of the brilliant Immaculate album and the premiere of the Immaculate digital theatre performance directed by Patrick J O’Reilly, as part of Féilean Earraigh 2021.

Immaculate is based on a true story of an artist struggling to piece together the life of her uncle Anthony, who tragically died in the early 90’s and whose cause of death is unknown. Through Immaculate, the artist is determined to reclaim his life, get the justice he deserves and celebrate equality, in this powerful song cycle performance featuring music by Stuart Robinson.

A woman goes on a hunt through time to bring her dead uncle back to life. A life that society swept under the carpet because he was everything to be denounced in his time. Now she is determined to put him in lights and on the pedestal, where his fabulousness deserves to be. Has society really changed its mind enough, from the 40’s to 80’s? When a gay illegitimate Irish Catholic man lives through troubles in Belfast, the “gay holocaust” in London, what new information will fill the blanks of her memory? Can she piece together the missing pieces to celebrate a man that lurks in her memory?

Immaculate will premiere as part of the Féile an Earraigh Arts Festival on 12-14 March 2021 with the aim of a live performance in Autumn 2021. Tickets: £8 per device, available from www. tinderbox.org.uk