Embrace
Embrace is Belfast International Arts Festival’s on-going programme of public engagement and professional developement, aimed at involving communities throughout the city.
Embrace is designed to both encourage active participation in the arts and to enhance audience enjoyment and understanding of specific events presented in the programme. They include free performances and active creative learning activities such as workshops, performance opportunities and artist talks. As an inclusive organisation, we encourage participation from diverse communities of interest and place.
Highlights from this year’s Embrace programme include:
- A community engagement programme around The Vanishing Elephant, generously funded by Department of Foreign Affairs: Reconciliation Fund.
- A free outdoor performance for all the family at CS Lewis Square on Saturday 26 October of the acrobatic WILD.
- Free recitals at St Mark’s Church, Dundela from 28-30 October from our partners BBC Radio 3, featuring the Z.E.N Trio.
- Free entry to the exhibitions in our Visual Arts & Film programme.
- To coincide with Tinderbox’s Yerma, Shirley-Anne McMillan, the Children’s Writing Fellow for Northern Ireland, gives a talk for 16–18-year-olds and school groups, at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s.
- Workshops for emerging artists including one led by Palestinian dance artists Samaa Wakim and Samar Haddad King at St Comgall’s on Divis St.
- A free workshop for playwrights based in NI exploring how the use of space can shape a play’s meaning.
- An informal event where designers, theatre, dance, and performance makers of all kinds are invited to meet each other while strolling through the city.
- A major professional development programme including a showcase of new theatre and dance from NI for a visiting delegation of international arts managers. There will also be a series of talks and discussions around contemporary arts practice.