Director’s Welcome 2025
Belfast International Arts Festival is an annual celebration of contemporary arts and culture dedicated to promoting new and bold work that regularly cuts across the traditional boundaries of music, dance, theatre and visual art. The Festival brings together artists and audiences from home and abroad in a range of locations and venues across Belfast, highlighting the very best of our city and country.
At the centre of this year’s programme are three new projects and collaborations that reflect the importance we place upon our values of global connectivity, cultural diversity, access and participation, community and contemporary arts practice. Our Voice Together Now is a unique dance exchange between Belfast, Cairo and Ramallah with three new works being created and presented over 2025 and 2026. Since mid-March, a group of teenagers from across Belfast and Galway have been working on a project called Future Parade, looking at how a new generation might positively animate our streets. This unique collaboration between Belfast International Arts Festival, Féile an Phobail, Eastside Arts and Galway-based street spectacle company Macnas is set to make an appearance during Féile an Phobail’s Halloween Parade. Delivered from Cahoots’ shared community theatre space in North Belfast, IN-visible IDentities 7: The Search for Harmony is a free community engagement programme involving up to 1,200 participants from across Belfast, exploring themes mirrored in Cahoots’ productions of The Musicians of Bremen Live! and Unlocking Sherlock, namely friendship, cooperation, and the value of second chances.
Future Parade and IN-visible ID-entities 7: The Search for Harmony are also part of our Embrace strand of programming, which is designed to both encourage active participation in the arts and to enhance audience enjoyment and understanding of specific productions presented in the programme. Look out for free events in Embrace including Anchored in Air, a ground-breaking and exhilarating aerial theatre show at CS Lewis Square from Head Over Wheels, a disabled & non-disabled aerial company, and free recitals by Charles Owens and Katya Apekisheva as part of our annual BBC Radio 3 partnership programme.
Theatre fans won’t be disappointed with new productions from local companies Big Telly, Cahoots, Lyric Theatre and Tinderbox. Making a welcome return to the festival is Nathan Ellis with his latest critically acclaimed piece, Instructions, where each night a different unrehearsed performer takes to the stage, ready to receive instructions and line-by-line a story unfolds, and a life unspools. When cookery book author Atoosa Sepehr fled Iran for a new life in London, family recipes helped her stave off homesickness. Now her story has been turned into a drama, My English Persian Kitchen by Palestinian-Irish writer Hannah Khalil – with mouth-watering onstage cooking that Belfast audiences can experience at first hand.
Contemporary dance has been a strong component of my festival programmes and this year is no different. Luail, the all-island dance company, present Emma Martin’s Dancehall at The MAC, and as part of the Our Voice Together Now project, Palestinian choreographer Salma Ataya presents Everynothing a new work with three Irish dancers at The Crescent in a special double bill also featuring The Fallen, a new solo work from our 2025 BIAF Artist in Residence, Michael McEvoy. The 2025 edition closes with the unmissable, joyous and life-affirming The Rest of Our Lives from Jo Fong and George Orange.
As always, there is so much more to enjoy including a diverse range of music, with special appearances by Martin Hayes Trio, Lisa O’Neill, Ulster Orchestra and Michael Gallen, and South Korea’s Hoola alongside exhibitions and talks from established and emerging artists and authors.
This is my final festival programme as Artistic Director and I want to express my sincere gratitude to all those who have helped me on my journey over the last 12 years and most particularly the artists and communities from home and abroad who the festival seeks to serve. My thanks to you all for your support of BIAF and I’m looking forward to personally seeing you at one of our events this autumn.
RICHARD WAKELY
Artistic Director and Chief Executive Belfast International Arts Festival