RUTH MACKENZIE, director of the London 2012 Festival that runs throughout next summer in parallel with the London Olympics and Paralympics, was rather enthusiastic about what this will all mean for Northern Ireland.
“The events in Northern Ireland will be weird and wonderful and inspiring and beautiful and unforgettable,” she said.
And for once it wasn’t all hype. The programme of cultural events on offer in Northern Ireland is impressive, and occasionally extraordinary.
There will be scores of events with more surprises disclosed as the festival approaches, according to Ms Mackenzie and Tony Hall, chairman of the Cultural Olympiad and chief executive of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London. “It could make people forget the recession,” according to Mr Hall.
Here are some of the highlights. At 8am on July 27th Turner prize-winning artist and musician Martin Creed will lead a loud three-minute ringing of “all the bells” in Britain and Northern Ireland. “On the morning of the opening of the games it’s a massive signal that something is happening,” he said.
German sound artist and composer Hans Peter Kuhn will create an installation of 150-200m-sized flags, red on one side and yellow on the other, along the dramatic landscape of the Giant’s Causeway using semi-rigid material to allow the winds play on the flags.
The Lands of the Giants is expected to draw an audience of 20,000 to the Titanic Slipways in east Belfast, featuring a story that draws inspiration from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver, Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the yellow cranes known in Belfast as Samson and Goliath.
Another 20,000 are expected to attend the Peace One Day concert featuring Massive Attack, a “DJ and trip hop duo from Bristol”, and others, at the old British army Ebrington base in Derry and hosted by actor Jude Law.
NI Opera will present Benjamin Britten’s children’s opera about Noah’s Ark, Noye’s Fludde at Belfast Zoo in co-operation with the Chinese KT Wong Foundation.
And on it goes, and all this when Belfast and Northern Ireland also will be marking the year of the sinking of the Titanic with a range of separate major events.
The festival will be held from June 21st to September 9th and is the finale of the four-year Cultural Olympiad.
