Northern Ireland Mental Health Arts Festival 2021

We are delighted to collaborate with the Strand Arts Centre on two new projects for this year's Northern Ireland Mental Health Arts Festival. The festival runs from 10th-16th May. Both projects were funded by Northern Ireland Screen's Digital Film Archive, supported by the Department for Communities.  Project managed by Strand Arts Centre.

Silverwood by Colm Laverty & Documenta

Enjoy the latest music video and an interview by Colm Laverty, a freelance filmmaker who works across the music and arts industries. His latest creation is a video for local Belfast based band Documenta in 2021.  Footage was used from the wonderful Spence Brothers films, ‘The Shadow Over Flatwoods’ ‘The Tyzzian Exiles’ and ‘The Testament of Caleb Meeke’. 

The accompanying interview covers his journey so far, re-creating and re-purposing archive footage to create new artworks and films. Watch Colm talk about working as a filmmaker and sharing some favourite clips from Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive. The archive has been an essential tool for Colm to create new work during the pandemic when people have been isolated and unable to work in the presence of others.

“Documenta are a cosmic drone-pop septet from Belfast who count David Holmes and The Charlatans' Tim Burgess among their fans. Since their inception in 2009, they’ve produced two otherworldly albums – Drone Pop #1 and Drone Pop #2, exploring their mutual interests of astronomy, melody and noise.The band have an extended version of their cracking David Holmes-produced track Love As a Ghost.” Anita Awbi – PRS for Music 

Visit NIMHAF to watch both films: https://www.nimhaf.org/documenta

'Life Goes On' by Jacqueline Wylie - Scenes of East Belfast during the first lockdown

Jacqueline Wylie began to document the impact of Covid-19 on herself and the spirit of her local community of Ballymacarrett in May 2020. Most of the photographs were taken while she walked the Greenway in East Belfast, litter picking and engaging with people, before she was furloughed from her role as a Connswater Community Greenway Leader. The majority of the images were taken in the neighbourhood on VE Day, 8th May 2020.

Now almost a year later, six of these documentary photographs will be exhibited this month in the poster boxes outside the Strand Arts Centre. 

Exhibition location: 

(Exterior)

Strand Arts Centre

156 Holywood Road

Belfast

BT4 1NY

The photographs at Strand Arts Centre form part of Wylie’s response to ‘Accessing Architecture’ funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund Northern Ireland and part of a larger project commissioned by University of Atypical about how disabled people experience and access the urban environment. This part of the project is funded by Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive, supported by the Department for Communities. 

If you like Wylie’s photographs, they form the basis of a series of upcoming online workshops “Disability, Covid, and the ‘Second Shift’”. These workshops offer people with a disability the opportunity to reflect on the past 12 months by making documentary or reflexive artwork via photography, drawing and social media.  This part of the ‘Accessing Architecture’ project is commissioned by the University of Atypical. Booking closes on 14th May. 

 https://universityofatypical.org/disability-covid-and-the-second-shift/