exhibitions in 'between' spaces in Belfast
Online Exhibition for Imagine 2023
Forgotten Spaces was a creative programme for the Imagine Belfast Festival 2023 that focused on our collective imagination for the city.
The online exhibition which showed over the month of March 2023 had close to 60 submissions spanning most of the city – there was surprisingly little duplication, barring a few notorious and well known spots but even at this – people had different ideas for what they could become and why. At festival week, the site had almost 2,000 unique visitors!
We added a competition element and public voting mechanism to the exhibition to encourage engagement over passive viewing. From this process, two submissions – Short Strand Green Wall and Donegall Street Car Park – were allocated the ‘top prize’ of £100, racking up well over 300 stars between them. A discussion event and prize giving was held on Wednesday March 22nd at the Europa Hotel. We were joined by Sean Dolan, Senior Development Manager, Belfast City Council and Seamus Connolly, Group Manager, Neighbourhoods, Regeneration and Sustainability, Glasgow City Council for discussion on methodologies and policies in place for ‘How to Regenerate Forgotten Spaces?’. In the continuing spirit of democracy the event audience got to vote to give special commendations for ‘inspiring our collective imagination’ to a further three entries from a shortlist – those selected were Clandeboyne Corner, Inner City Forest (east) and The Church at Fountainville Ave.
Listen back to the audio from the event here.
Pictures from the event are below, courtesy of Joe Laverty Photography who also captured the event audio - Thanks Joe!
*I'll add captions at some point
Get Involved
We want citizens of Belfast to share the unloved spaces of the city which catch their attention. Maybe you have a story of what they once were, what you imagine they could be, or even find a particular beauty/interest in what they are at the moment.
The 'open call' is closed for the mo and we’re not sure what the next stage will be (or if there will be one) but are always open to discussion ideas and love seeing your spaces so get in touch :)
Submit this form and email your image to us liminalspacebelfast@gmail.com with the subject heading 'Forgotten Spaces'
Notes
- Spaces featured must be within the Belfast City Council boundary
- we're not defining what a space is.. it can be a building, an area, a corner, a nook, a wall.... whatever you think fits.