Banana Block is excited to present the newest addition to the bunch: The House. Created in partnership with National Museums NI through funding support from Tourism Northern Ireland ‘The House’ is a new community arts space that recreates buildings from nearby Cluan Place in the early twentieth Century, as they can currently be found in the Ulster Folk Museum.
We invite you to explore and reconnect with the heritage of East Belfast in this new exhibit through the stories of people living here a century before us. Using a to-scale plywood model of Dressmaker’s House in Cluan Place as a starting point, this exciting new project will also commission local artists to explore the idea of ‘home’ through a series of installations, exhibitions, workshops and events.
For this, we’ll be kicking things off with our very own ‘For Folk’s Sake’ Artist Residency programme. Funded by Belfast City Council through our partnership with Portview Trade Centre and Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre, this programme will welcome three artists to respond to themes of Living, Growing and Making through Spring 2024. The residencies will provide artists with a dedicated space to demonstrate how stories, skills and traditions from the past are more important than ever in the fast-changing world we live in today.
We hope that the For Folk’s Sake residency programme will extend the arts and heritage offering at Banana Block, building on the success of a number of trans-European artist residencies through the EU-funded Creative Rooftop Network project in 2022.
Keep an eye on our What’s On Guide for ways to get involved in residency-related exhibitions and events.
Exhibition view in Banana Block. Archive Film courtesy of NI Screen.
Photography: Niall Boyle and Jake Thompson.