Wednesday 8 June 2022
13:30 – ‘Day 0’ Pre-tour Congress Registration at the Oh Yeah Centre. All tours will leave from The Oh Yeah Centre.
14:15-14:30 – Tours leave the Oh Yeah Centre
These tours will run simultaneously, leaving from the registration hub at the Oh Yeah Centre. Please register for your preferred workshop via this questionnaire.
1. Belfast UNESCO City of Music walking tour and 2. Belfast UNESCO City of Music bus tour
The outline below describes the bus tour, but gives a flavour of what to expect from the walking tour.
Take a bus journey through the Heart of this Newly appointed UNESCO Rock and Roll City. Sit back, relax and enjoy tunes and tales from Them and Van Morrison, by way of awesome guitar players, traditional and folk to punk and Hollywood sound tracks.
The Belfast Music Tour is a journey across the city that reveals the music, the artists and the landscape that have brought character to the city. The two hour trip starts outside Oh Yeah in Gordon Street and makes its first stop at the beautifully restored Ulster Hall, home to the Ulster Orchestra and also host to Led Zeppelin in 1971 for the world premiere of ‘Stairway to Heaven’.
The Tour takes in the site of the Maritime Hotel, where Van Morrison and Them made their debut in 1964. The Bus then heads south to remember the amazing career of Ruby Murray. West Belfast is home to the folk dynasty the McPeake Family and their timeless ballad ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ and also the late fiddle champion Sean McGuire as well as Bap and Brian Kennedy. The bus then crosses Shore Road, former stomping ground of the flautist James Galway.
East Belfast has been celebrated in a score of Van Morrison songs – Hyndford St and Cyprus Avenue, passing Orangefield and the six bells of St Donard’s Church and also crossing the haunts of Gary Moore. Blues talent Eric Bell and songwriter David McWilliams are also appreciated on Route.
The final leg of the tour takes you down Ormeau Road, former haunt of David Holmes, who provided the soundtrack to Ocean’s Eleven and many other films. You’ll pass the Belfast Waterfront, scene of the pivotal ‘Yes’ concert in 1998 with Ash and U2. The final moments pay tribute to the harpers convention of 1792 and the location where The Undertones recorded Teenage Kicks in 1978. The tour finishes at Oh Yeah Music Centre and its music exhibition.
3. Belfast Secret Peace Lines bus tour with Dr David Coyles
This event takes an alternative tour through the city of Belfast. Drawing on recent findings from the Hidden Barriers research programme at Ulster University, the tour visits a range of divisive architectural installations put in place by a confidential government security committee during ‘The Troubles’, the period between 1969 and 1998 when the sectarian conflict in and about Northern Ireland was at its most extreme.
Quite distinct from Belfast’s highly visible and widely recognised ‘peace walls’, these hidden barriers are made up of everyday parts of the built environment such as shops, houses, factories, roads, and landscaping. The tour travels to the north, east and west of Belfast to reveal first-hand the ways in which these seemingly benign structures act as hidden peace walls between Catholic and Protestant communities which enforce social and physical division in unseen and problematic ways.
4. Views of the City walking tour with Joe Laverty in partnership with Belfast Design Week
Join local photographer Joe Laverty on a photographic tour through Belfast that focuses on the fabric and design of the city.
You’ll explore the good, the bad and the ugly sides of the built environment in the city and all through a photographer’s lens. Joe will advise you on some of the best ways to take photographs, the details that you’d miss without a local’s eye and he’ll share some of his own favourite spots to photograph too.
You’ll also visit the Belfast Exposed gallery, with a chance to see photo books of some of the city’s most renowned photographers.
Wear your most comfortable shoes and of course – bring along your camera, tablet or smartphone!
Find out more about Joe’s work at www.joelaverty-photography.com and find out about Belfast Design Week at belfastdesignweek.com
5. Gaeltacht Quarter Architecture walking tour
This architecture tour with Ciaran Mackel will four ‘fragments’. Starting at the Raidió Fáilte building, fragment 1 is the Irish language in the city of Belfast, infrastructured, fractured communities, and ‘my city too’. Fragment 2 will look at Bombay Street, Conway Mill, Victorian parks and the Hospital
Moving on to Cultúrlann, fragment 3 will explore St Dominic’s school chapel and Harry Clarke window, St Mary’s University, Áras na bhFál building, and the Gaeltacht Quarter regeneration project. Then, finally, to Coláiste Feirste (Irish language secondary school), fragment 4 looks at Council lands, the presence of a language in a community, and ambitions for new projects, including housing.