NoRTH STAR
North Star is one of 17 projects selected to represent Belfast in a year-long celebration of the city’s creativity: Belfast 2024. North Star is a new chapter in our Belfast Story, a performance linking Belfast, to Africa, connecting the Irish and African diaspora. At the invitation of the Anti-Slavery Society, Frederick Douglass delivered a landmark speech in Belfast. Upon leaving he reflected on the warmth of the people.
“Wherever else I feel myself to be a stranger, I will remember I have a home in Belfast.”
24 Oct 2024 & 25 Oct 2024
North Star will honour this occasion by asking Belfast to respond to the quote by posing the question “What makes people feel At Home in Belfast?” while also encouraging discussion around potential feelings of isolation, alienation and the complexities that enable anyone to feel ‘At Home.’ North Star also marks the public launch, and public introduction to Solab, a wider overarching and long-term project which North Star sits within.
Solab is a digital space for African artists and the diaspora to connect, create and collaborate, providing openings for everyone to engage in creative processes, through the lens of Black culture and creativity. Solab will exist as an eventual platform which will enable users to create works from a palette of Black cultural expression, enabling audiences to learn and value Black cultures and Black people. The website also hosts a paper prototype of our App, Solab Access, as well as completed works from artists based across Africa and members of the diaspora in Belfast.
A need for Solab was born out of witnessing and experiencing the type of systemic racism against Black people, that culminated in the murder of George Floyd. Debate revealed racism very much existed here, but neglected, due to a community still wrestling with Sectarianism. Belfast 2024 provided an opportunity to present a live manifestation of the digital space, a window into our shared history while presenting a new space to present new stories and provide new experiences, anchored on the impact of orator, writer and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass’s visit to Belfast in 1845.
North Star begins with a school programme, providing a key creative and educational platform for communities to engage Black cultural expression. Parallel to the school engagement we have commissioned four world class artists, Grammy Award winner, Kaidi Tatham; award-winning poet, Nandi Jola, rising stars Leo Miyagee and Winnie Ama, featuring a special commission by acclaimed actor Colin Salmon and Ivor Novello Winner, Hannah Peel each responding to the same quote and question of ‘Home’.
The link of cutting-edge technology to our eventual digital platform begins from how audiences at the North Star event will be immersed in Spoken word, Song, Beats and Bars, staged in the round, with light and sound circumnavigating the Belfast Telegraph Building, through a 360-degree surround sound and lighting system.
We are very excited about ways to extend engagement and ignite a new dialogue framed like no other from our city, making it unique to the world, beginning with North Star.