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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.
With over half the year gone, the flurry of project completions has now given way to relative calm. This offers us a period of reflection (and project evaluation) before the storm of September arrives with a new batch of groups taking their place on New Belfast’s 2010-2011 programme. In looking at our achievements over the past while, we have successfully guided 3,176 people through our programme, all of them completing workshop projects in their own community premises, their school or a neutral venue to support cross-community partnerships. Congratulations to all our participants and many thanks to the staff at our community partner groups and schools for their assistance in developing such well-received projects. This work could not be achieved without the co-ordination skills of the New Belfast project team: Chelley McLear, Sally Young, Rachael Campbell-Palmer, Claire Concannon, Clare McComish and Heather Douglas. Together with our webmaster and all round technical magician Steven Tunley, we have really exceeded expectations this year in turns of numbers and outcomes. Please have a look at the individual project strand web pages to get a flavour of the work involved. Of course, a great deal of thanks must go to Francesca Biondi, our Business Development Manager as well, not only on a great year for new project work with new partner organisations but also on the happy arrival of a new member of her household. To the newest member of New Belfast, benvenuto.
So, as we evaluate our projects and try to build on the successes of the past year, we also move into another phase of looking for new project areas and new ways to support people through our workshop programme. Even though there may be dark clouds on the funding horizon, we are optimistic that the recognition of community art and the role it can play in transforming and supporting communities and individuals is growing and cannot now be ignored. Creative energy and community-spirit are barometers of well-being in a society. Community arts can harness our innate creativity and provide the touchstones of how we engage with each other. Community arts can improve, not only our quality of life but also our opportunities in life. New skills, new expression, new friends…New Belfast.
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