Belfast Children’s Festival launches 2024 programme!

Nine-day festival to feature ‘world leaders’, a spot of weather and inclusive dance, theatre and music.

Roll up, roll up, Belfast Children’s Festival 2024 is coming to town!

Launched on 25 January 2024 at the Crescent Arts Centre, this year’s circus themed festival will welcome crowds to ‘big top’ venues including The Lyric, The MAC, Belfast Cathedral, Culturlann MacAdam Ó Fiaich and Crescent Arts Centre from 8-16 March.

Over 100 events and performances will take place during the festival, which features productions from the Netherlands, Scotland, England and Ireland, local artists, firm festival favourites like Baby Rave and several UK and Ireland premiers.

The Belfast Children’s Festival is principally supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and by Belfast City Council.

Speaking at the launch of Belfast Children’s Festival, Young at Art Director, EibhIín de Barra said:

“We are so excited to launch Belfast Children’s Festival 2024 as we bring together everything from the big top circus to sea, land and the world of creativity in between. After last year’s 25th anniversary, we are delighted to bring over 100 events and performances to Belfast during the nine-day festival for families, small children from 0-100. Age is just a number when it comes to the festival.  We are really pleased to be bringing world and UK premières to the festival and tackling some major real-life issues around neuro divergence, wellbeing, relationships, disability, and diversity.  As well as firm favourites like Baby Rave, we are delighted to have so many new pieces, and visiting artists from Europe, UK and Ireland.  So, whether you are young, or simply young at heart, roll up, roll up, and come and explore the festival with us!”

Looking forward to the 2024 Belfast Children’s Festival, Roisín McDonough, Chief Executive, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, said:

“Thanks to the National Lottery players, for many children, the Belfast Children’s Festival will be their first experience of live, professional arts. There is no better place to start. Our early encounters with theatre and storytelling can have a deep and lasting influence on our creative imaginations and the way we view the world around us, so we owe it to our children – all of our children – that these formative experiences meet the highest possible standards. 26 years championing the rights of children to enjoy full creative lives and in the process, building one of the biggest and certainly one of the greatest children’s arts festivals on these islands, means that every one of the hand-picked events that you will have the opportunity to enjoy, comes with BCF’s copper-fastened quality assurance.”

Lord Mayor of Belfast, Councillor Ryan Murphy, who addressed guests at the festival launch said:

“Our city is just bursting with creativity and potential and that’s exactly what we’re celebrating during Belfast 2024.

“We want to give people opportunities to dream and invent; to speculate and investigate; to learn and experiment; to imagine a new future, new spaces, a new balance with nature, new stories and new experiences. a celebration of our people and our place, as we look towards our city’s future.

“So a big thank you to Belfast Children’s Festival for curating an outstanding programme of creative, innovative and fun experiences for young people across all communities. We’re proud to invest in BCF and look forward to seeing even more people engaging with cultural experiences and their own creativity during Belfast 2024.”

I…um I from the Netherlands isa powerful performance exploring what it’s like to lose your grip on reality. This astonishing show is set within a rotating box where the main character performs his daily routine, moving effortlessly between rooms. Trap doors open, hidden objects are revealed, all timed precisely and seemingly defying gravity. Slowly though, this carefully planned routine starts to unravel, as we witness our main character’s battle with time and reality… and a giant fish!

BullyBully, asks – what do a toddler and the average world leader have in common? Do some presidents throw fits in the middle of a supermarket? Or scream furiously until they get their own way?  Surely not! In BullyBully, two world leaders meet in no man’s land. What follows is an awkward encounter between two childish but powerful adults who gradually get used to each other and learn to meet in the middle. This madcap musical about childish grown-up men, featuring two performers, songs, funny quarrels, a bit of bickering and eventually, a happy ending. 

BullyBully and I…um I are part of the festival’s Dutch Focus, supported by Performing Arts NL and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

From bickering to another favourite local topic; the weather.  Grand Soft Day is a brand-new show of all seasons: Splashing in puddles, wind whipping your hair, crunching frost under your feet, and rain dripping on your nose, now that’s a grand soft day. This playful show about always being prepared even though you do not know what the day will bring. An international co-production from the award-winning teams of Branar (Ireland) and New International Encounter (UK/Norway), Grand Soft Day celebrates the wonder of the world around us.

Every circus needs a venue, and Little Top is a magical first circus experience for babies and their adults. At a time in their development when children are discovering their own physicality and the pleasures and perils of gravity, Little Top invites babies to experience spectacular balances, astonishing tumbles and inventive juggling in a specially designed set, that miniaturises the magic of the Big Top! Here professional circus acrobats, acro-balancers and jugglers perform up close in babies’ line of sight, making eye contact and interacting and responding to their young audience. Babies and adults alike are transported into a playful, joyous, upside down, topsy turvy world where people can fly, patterns fill the air, and anything is possible.

Peek beyond the circus curtain and step into the wonder of Tabula Rasa! A magical space that holds many incredible feats from the world of circus and dance. This one-off show, curated specially for the Belfast Children’s Festival, will mesmerize the audience as bodies effortlessly flip, float and fly, filling air and ground with colour and awe.

From the tent to the sea, Making Waves is a magical sea voyage where audience and performers set sail in search of hidden treasure. An immersive multi-sensory dance theatre performance designed for disabled children and young people with mild to complex needs, participants join the adventure and are transported by the ebb and flow of the ocean through gentle soothing currents and on into the dynamic rhythmic beat of crashing waves. This inclusive show invites audience members to sit in pods representing boats on the stage, allowing everyone to become part of the adventure. The specially designed boats are suitable for wheelchair users too.

From the sea, you can descend into a mechanical world deep below the earth’s surface. Hollow, is a non-verbal inclusive theatre adventure inspired by the mysteries and sensations of subterranean exploration.  It is the story of three living, breathing cogs who depend on each other’s unique abilities to maintain and operate a great perpetual machine. What might happen if our cogs stop spinning…?

Created and delivered by local Belfast Replay Theatre Company, in association with The MAC, this production incorporates evidence-based engagement strategies curated through a long history of engaging disabled and/or neurodivergent young people in many different forms.   Hollow will perform to one autistic and/or neurodivergent young person per show within an immersive setting. Each audience member can be accompanied by three familiar adults, creating a meaningful shared social experience and memories that last.

The Festival includes an Irish Language programme at Culturlann MacAdam Ó Fiaich, featuring Babaithe Cultúir and a fun interactive session with Fearghas Mac Lochlainn and Paddy Donnelly, author and illustrator of An Slípear Gloine , winner of the Gradam Réics Carló 2020, An tOireachas, and the Judges Special Awards, KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Awards

View the festival programme at www.youngatart.co.uk.  Community groups wishing to secure tickets for events can apply via [email protected]

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