This year, the 13th Belfast Children’s Festival is all about how you look at things. Through ten days of citywide events, we will be giving new perspectives on theatre, a focus on the visual arts, music and dance from international artists, from some of Northern Ireland’s most innovative talents and celebrating the creativity of children, taking the festival into new venues and offering its largest programme and largest selection of FREE events to date.

 

Dublin band The Cast of Cheers play Lavery's Bunker with support from The Alice Kona Band. The admission fee also includes access to Stereo club night.

 

Australian comic Matthew Hardy makes his long overdue return to Belfast.

 

One of Belfast's finest Irish Traditional Sessions.

 

Annie Mac Skream Delphic (live) DJ Zinc Greenmoney Annie Mac returns to Belfast for her biggest Irish show yet - her first in the Ulster Hall. Annie chooses the finest established and up-and-coming DJs for her tour. The show sees the Northern Irish live debut of Manchester chart topping trio, Delphic, tipped to be one of 2010’s hottest act’s. The show also features DJ’s sets from Annie Mac herself, Dubstep boy wonder Skream, pioneering DJ & producer Zinc and Greenmoney.

 

ou’ll hear jazzy, dubby, funky, housy, jungly kinda sounds until late in the night or early morning

 

Put on your sari and start practicing your bhangra moves for the best Baby Rave yet, with a Bollywood twist, complete with DJ, dance facilitators, lighting, projections and pram parking.

 

Put on your sari and start practicing your bhangra moves for the best Baby Rave yet, with a Bollywood twist, complete with DJ, dance facilitators, lighting, projections and pram parking.

 

Put on your sari and start practicing your bhangra moves for the best Baby Rave yet, with a Bollywood twist, complete with DJ, dance facilitators, lighting, projections and pram parking.

 

Based on the characters created by Lauren Child Adapted by Jonathon Lloyd I have this little sister, Lola. She is small and very funny.... Don’t miss everyone’s favourite brother and sister, Charlie and Lola, in their ever-so wonderful stage show! The stars of the hit BBC TV series and books by Lauren Child are brought to life by a magical mix of puppets and music. Will Lola ever tidy her messy room? Will Charlie get Lola to sleep, even though she is not sleepy and will not go to bed?

 

Charlie and Lola's Best Bestest Play

 

Based on the characters created by Lauren Child Adapted by Jonathon Lloyd I have this little sister, Lola. She is small and very funny.... Don’t miss everyone’s favourite brother and sister, Charlie and Lola, in their ever-so wonderful stage show! The stars of the hit BBC TV series and books by Lauren Child are brought to life by a magical mix of puppets and music. Will Lola ever tidy her messy room? Will Charlie get Lola to sleep, even though she is not sleepy and will not go to bed?

 

Charlie and Lola's Best Bestest Play

 

Dave F provides a hustlin’ bustlin’ soundtrack to a night of shooting pool and playing it cool.

 

"Daniel Morden is one of the UK`s greatest storytellers and a respected author. He will be talking about and reading from his latest book Fearless. A gruesome tale of a boy who is confronted by ghouls, corpses and demons, it will make you shudder with fear! Fearless has been written with reluctant readers in mind, the text is in a specially designed font, the paper is off-white and the sentence and paragraph construction has been carefully designed for the clearest and most readable layout."

 

A Genre Jumping Mix By Andrew Leathem or Shep.

 

Probably the finest title given to a theatrical performance, ever. The blurb says: "This hilarious production returns by popular demand. Directed by Peter Corry and starring Nuala McKeever, this broadway smash hit helps you find out all you need to know about relationships, the good, the bad and the in-laws.

 

Indie rock band Kassidy play the Speakeasy with support from The Boy Who Trapped The Sun.

 

 

Tiny trans is taking youngsters under their rock’n’roll wing transforming them into real life rockstars. If you love music, dancing and dressing up (rock star/diva tantrums optional), then they’re going to love Rock & Roll High School. Kids will learn how to make their own instruments, have their faces painted (think David Bowie and Gene Simmons), visit the dress-up box and get their hair done rock band style!

 

A tribute to the late, great, Irish soul legend Sam Mahood.

 

A massive Saturday night party spread over two floors in Lavery's. The Bunker and The Ballroom.

 

Technasia album launch party. Featuring: Bob Murray and Ryan Dallas.

 

Some things are just meant to be. Thus it was that Ritzy Bryan and Rhydian Dafydd met at school and discovered their shared love of music. The pair, opinionated and deeply in love with the whole idea of being in a band, started to spend time at North Walian music mecca The Buckley Tivoli, gaining inspiration and experience from the procession of touring and local bands that took to the stage. With Ritzy's parents enormous, exhaustive record collection delivering an encyclopaedic library of popular music in all its forms the die was cast. Nevertheless, in an otherwise provincial, sleepy setting, itchy feet and a fleeing were inevitable; Ritzy to Washington DC and Rhydian to Manchester, where they enjoyed separate but strangely parallel journeys as singer songwriters. It was a single phone call that reunited them, this time they would write and record together. Back in North Wales a flurry of early recordings revealed a voice emerging; the beauty of their surroundings against the sadness of personal circumstances tugging conflictingly in their songs and selves. They decided to move, choosing London as their new home and a base for their live aspirations. With Matt Thomas on drums, a conjoint surrealist and raw, forceful drummer, The Joy Formidable thrived on the live front. Soundscape layers spiked by the nakedness of a 3-piece, gargantuan, clamorous bass and guitars that come in waves laid down a musical bed on which Ritzy’s voice could seethe and coo in equal measure. Little wonder that early shows gained the band a well deserved reputation as a band you had to see, pushing The Joy Formidable into the public consciousness from the very beginning. With a sound that melds the huge expanses of their native Mold countryside to the hectic nature of their new domicile, The Joy Formidable create a music that is by turns sublime and gothic, punctuating passages of sheer beauty with shards of dissonance and anger, a new loud quiet dynamic for a new decade. The move to London also determined a working ethos that survives to the present day. The band’s bedroom is a chrysalis that mutates daily from sleeping quarters, to studio, to workshop. It was here they recorded the singles Austere, Cradle and Whirring from their 8 track CD “A Balloon called Moaning" - a defiant release of optimism against their own heavy hearts - and it is here that new single, ‘Popinjay’ and the forthcoming debut album are being put together by the trio, independent of any outside influence. Having sold out multiple UK tours throughout 2009 and taken to the road in this country in support of the likes of Editors, this self contained band, recording studio, label and design company in one has also made their mark across the globe, touring Europe with The Temper Trap and visiting the US with Passion Pit, where support dates were supplemented by their first two headline US shows, both sold out and the subject of high praise amongst the cognoscenti of New York City and the US music scene. Now, The Joy Formidable return to home ground for their most extensive UK tour to date, including their largest ever show on these shores, at London’s Electric Ballroom. Already high on the list of bands to break through amongst those in the know in the first year of this new decade, The Joy Formidable continue to hold their futures firmly in their own hands. Like we say, some things are just meant to be.

 

Classic Chart Hits.