Bronagh Lawson is an artist based in Belfast who has written a blog about the vibrant local contemporary visual arts scene for the last ten years. Previously starting as a participant then manager she ran cross-community cross border development programmes for 13 years.
Originally from Portaferry and Strangford she is a Fulbright scholar and graduate of Winchester School of Art.
Bronagh is a co-founder of the Hydrangea project a Belfast — a Chicago collaboration which uses contemporary art underpinned with art therapy to act as a healing mechanism. Her book 'Belfast City of Light: Looking and Listening to Belfast Come with Me' is based on her experience as a non-churchgoer attending every church in Belfast for a service over a ten year period.
THE arts is a really great way of building cultural bridges across the world. Bbeyond, Ireland's oldest performance art organisation, is bringing eight Chinese performance artists over to perform alongside four Bbeyond members from Ireland.
A NEW theatrical walking tour brings Belfast’s ‘forgotten sister’ out of the shadows. You have seen her as a statue now imagine her in real life and maybe consider the breadth of what happened in her lifetime and how she was part of a political push for change.
WEST Belfast born and bred Ted Pim is currently exhibiting in London's Almine Rech Gallery. 'Never Odd or Even' focuses on mirrored images and the work is inspired by Dutch old masters, Baroque and Renaissance paintings. But as Ted creates his own reality the colour and echoes of modern life sneak into them.
There is a movement of people who wish to put the Saint back into St Patrick's day.
WITH Belfast 2024 come some opportunities for communities to get involved. Wild Belfast has, as you might expect, an environmental remit and in a twist on the city's mural history it currently has a call-out to communities that would like a living wildlife mural with an environmental aspect to it. It doesn't mean you will get a tiger in your terrace, but how about nesting boxes or bug hotels?
PETER O'Neill started off in Belfast with a comedy festival so I'm not sure if we should read anything into the fact that he has now moved on to a Festival of Ideas and Politics, a seven-day, 130-event extravaganza in March filled with humour, talks, music, theatre exhibitions, tours, discussions and workshops.
THERE was a feeling that hell had frozen over for the unveiling of two new statues of Mary Ann McCracken and Winifred Carney at City Hall. If you had been one of the people in the crowd at, say, Bill Clinton addressing Belfast, or this rally or that rally over the years, you'd have seen that there was a markedly different atmosphere and a very eclectic crowd of people. A real diversity of political opinion.
TOWNSEND Enterprise Park at the bottom of the Falls and Shankill have launched a project with their relatively new neighbours, the Ulster Orchestra, who have taken over Townsend Street Presbyterian church.
NOT since Rihanna found love in a hopeless place has the New Lodge been the feature of global attention. A new UK/Ireland/Belgium film, The Flats, directed by Alessandria Celesia, is having its world premier in Copenhagen in March.
SITTING in St Matthew's, the only shamrock-shaped church in Ireland (on the Woodvale Road, would you believe?), for an inter-church Ash Wednesday service I was considering was it the ultimate cross-community experience?
The 4 Corners Festival has just finished its 13th annual celebration "bringing Belfast together". This initiative of the Christian faith communities certainly did that this year, not a mean feat in a city where culture can be used as a weapon.
WHEN regimes change some artists can feel it in their bones – and their work reflects that. It was said that when the Iron Curtain fell art dealers working with artists behind the Berlin Wall knew of its fall three years in advance because they could see the change in the artists' work.
CATHY Carson's 'Becoming Marvellous' at the Black Box as part of the Out to Lunch festival took the audience on a journey from West Belfast through homelessness to eventual recovery. As we sat down to our chicken and potato lunch, Carson – playing a women called Danielle – gripped the audience in a one-woman show.
JOEL Simon arrived in Belfast from Belgium, drawn by the lure of an animation course. He had been inspired by the cartoon Tintin as a child and loved the storytelling flow of cartoon books. He had previously studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Liège.
IF visual art is your passion your creative journey can meander in different directions at different life stages, but the core pulse of creativity often demands to push through no matter your life circumstances or life changes. In fact, it can often be the actual life saviour to whatever situation you find yourself in.