With Belfast Children’s Festival coming up 6th-15th March 2025, we thought we’d share some of the Industry Events, along with our Top Picks to see during the festival!
INDUSTRY EVENTS:
Creative Conversations
Join us for an afternoon of Creative Conversations and hear from artists, practitioners and leaders in the field of performance work for young audiences. Investigate and explore their practices and approaches, hear how they have made discoveries, overcome challenges, and unpack some of the hot topics of the moment, including:
The Art of Adaptation
How do you successfully adapt a much-loved literary classic for young audiences? Janice Kernoghan-Reid (Replay Theatre Company) and Marc Mac Lochlainn (Branar Theatre Company) share their experiences of shaping two iconic literary works (The Velveteen Rabbit, and Ulysses) for the stage for children and young people in conversation with Kate Cross (The Egg).
The Terrifying Teens
Hard to reach or easy to forget, how well do we as theatre makers, creators and arts organisations serve the youth audience? Are we telling stories that resonate with them? Are we even speaking the same language? Join Tony Reekie (Catherine Wheels) as he discusses this hot topic with special guests, including Prime Cut Productions and hetpaleis (Antwerp).
Sidelined
No-one is as deaf as the person who won’t listen; someone out there is a younger version of you and needs to meet you! Sean Chandler is a Deaf musician, consultant and educator who teaches music to deaf young people. Join him as he chats to Patrick McCarthy (Ulster Orchestra) about the role of representation in the industry, the importance of collaboration and the hope that resides in all of us.
This event is BSL Signed.
Venue: Oh Yeah Music Centre
Date: Fri 7 March
Time: 2 – 4.30pm
Tickets: Free. Booking Essential
The Art of Listening: The Role of Children’s Advisory Panels
As festivals and venues dedicated to children and young people, how do we ensure that they get a say in what events and performances are programmed for them? Young at Art has been piloting the Young at Art Collective, a cohort of young people aged 7-11yrs who have been working with Young at Art over the past three years.
Join YAA’s Creative Producer Jackie Fauteux and Professor Tom Maguire (Ulster University) as they share initial project research findings. We will also be joined by Aideen Howard (The Ark, Dublin) and Aislinn Ó hEocha (Baboró International Festival for
Children and Young People, Galway) as they share their experiences and insights of their children’s advisory panel models.
Venue: Oh Yeah Music Centre
Date: Sat 8 March
Time: 10.30am – 12noon
Tickets: Free. Booking Essential
The Rights and Participation of Children in Making Policy
Young at Art, Save the Children and Professor Bronagh Byrne (Co-Director of the Centre for Children’s Rights at Queen’s University Belfast) will host a conversation on how listening to children can, and should, be at the centre policy-making, with a focus on how creative engagement can open up new ways to hear children express their rights and views and not only feel, but be, involved in transforming decisions affecting them.
Venue: Long Gallery, Parliamentary Buildings, Stormont
Date: Fri 14 March
Time: 9.30am – 12noon
Tickets: Free. Booking Essential
Creating Movement Based Performance Work for Early Years
Join Nicola Curry, Artistic Director of Maiden Voyage Dance, NI’s leading contemporary dance company, in conversation with Mónica Muñoz (Artistic Director, Mónica Muñoz Dance) and Georgia Tegou (Choreographer of Moonlight Dream). They will discuss their unique approaches to making movement-based work for very young children and young people with disabilities and complex needs, and how they use movement, music and sensory experiences to transport the very youngest audiences on unique, evocative and sensory journeys.
Venue: Crescent Arts Centre
Date: Fri 14 March
Time: 2.30pm – 4pm
Tickets: Free. Booking Essential
TOP PICKS
Der Lauf (Belgium)
“It is daft, delirious, edge-of-your-seat stuff.” The Guardian
Welcome to the surreal world of Der Lauf, where nothing is quite as it seems. Two circus performers compete in a series of bizarre challenges as they juggle blindly, spin plates wildly and stack glasses wearing enormous boxing gloves. As the glasses rise, so do the stakes.
Will you, their only guide, help lead them to safety or towards further peril?
Expect the unexpected in this series of absurd games played in an offbeat cabaret style that will enthral young and old alike.
Venue: The MAC
Date:Â Sat 15 March
Time: 2pm & 5pm
Tickets: ÂŁ12
Murmur (Flanders)
Murmur is an immersive sound theatre experience, with murmuring backpacks, a landscape of scattered tiny speakers and an acrobatic composer.
Camiel is building a world full of sounds. A purring cat appears from a pocket, a swarm of bees flies through the air, two arms create the sound of cars…. Far away you hear a finger squeaking on a window. Sea becomes wind, becomes breath.
Surrounded by the audience, Camiel jumps, falls, rolls, and flies in his attempt to compose the world. Suddenly the audience’s backpacks start to buzz and everything and everyone becomes part of a swirl of sounds in a landscape of loudspeakers.
Venue: Crescent Arts Centre
Date:Â Sat 15 March
Time: 2pm & 4:30pm
Tickets: ÂŁ12
Sandscape (Nigeria)
Sand is a favourite plaything for so many children, but how exactly does it feel when it runs through your hand, over umbrellas and into buckets?
Sandscape is a non-verbal theatrical performance celebrating the beauty and essence of nature, using sand as its central element.
A playful and immersive experience using plastic, cups, umbrellas, and buckets, Sandscape explores the texture, weight, and movement of sand on different materials, giving a relaxing and engaging experience for the audience.
Venue: Brian Friel Theatre, QUB
Date:Â Sat 8 March
Time: 2pm & 4pm
Tickets: ÂŁ12
You’ll See (ROI)
Ulysses for Children? Yes, Ulysses for Children!
James Joyce’s epic story of one day in one city is brought to life in this inventive new show, bringing Ireland’s most notorious book to audiences aged 8 and upwards, and to all those who haven’t got around to reading it yet.
Combining Branar’s signature storytelling, intricate paper design, an original score with Joyce’s odyssey, You’ll See is theatre that will excite both young and old.
Originally commissioned by and produced as part of Ulysses 2.2, a collaborative project between ANU, Landmark Productions and Museum of Literature Ireland.
Venue: Brian Friel Theatre, QUB
Date:Â Sat 8 March
Time: 2pm & 4pm
Tickets: ÂŁ12