The Context
Connswater Shopping Centre is an indoor retail mall based in East Belfast, with almost 60 stores offering food, fashion, footwear and jewellery, plus fast food dining.
C21 Theatre Company is a Northern Irish touring theatre company that champions new stories, with an eye to international audiences and festivals. Their mission is to embrace traditional, digital and interactive methods as well as site-specific projects, delivering enriching and memorable experiences in the heart of communities. They also collaborate with public and private organisations, education and tourism bodies.
Connswater Shopping Centre is located right in the heart of the community in East Belfast, and wanted to connect with it’s local residents as part of it’s ongoing commitment to celebrating the area’s heritage and culture. Due to COVID 19, it has become increasingly difficult for arts organisations to interact in any way through the medium of drama, and c21 Theatre Company were looking for a unique opportunity to be interactive within the community and maintain their creative approach.
The Solution
Forming a brand new partnership based on a mutual desire to engage communities, Connswater and C21 joined together to deliver the Scenes from the East Side installation. The centre management team encouraged the relationship to grow by offering in-kind sponsorship as well as a contribution in cash to make the project happen.
The project involved engaging with members of the public, initially, in a green screen recording session at Connswater Shopping Centre, in a retail unit provided by the centre. Directly engaging with the public captured the widest possible range of participants through simple pop-up sessions in the shopping centre and the recordings gave a cross-section of perspectives, giving their interpretation of HOME and what it meant to them.
Stills of the films were then edited and were used as individual visual pieces which were displayed in the shopping centre retail unit. c21 aimed to represent all the participants who had input into the recordings, with East Belfast itself weaving through the themes and stories of participants.
The resulting show saw small projectors being brought into the assigned unit to beam images onto the walls of the retail unit creating a gallery of exciting individual videos, taken from the interactive green screen sessions with the public.
The artworks tell stories, present mysteries; show diversity, originality and the simple beauties or challenges of life. The participants themselves, collaborating with the artistic team to create their pieces, determined the work.
Scenes from the East Side employed 5 artists, and 2 freelance staff, with over 75 individuals from the local area also taking part.
Over the four days of the exhibition, the showcase enjoyed over 100 attendees directly within the gallery space, 30% of whom were participating individuals.
Large numbers of additional viewers also engaged with the gallery from outside the unit via the window. Some found that they were happy to view from outside whilst others preferred to enter the unit.
Numerous individuals stopped and watched the promo on Connswater’s media screen at the entrance of the shopping mall and others who came to visit documented and shared their experience across social media, helping broaden the campaign’s reach even further.
The feedback from visitors and participants was incredibly positive, with many voicing their pleasure at seeing ‘real people’ celebrated, and a sense of civic pride in the East Belfast area.
“I'm absolutely delighted to have Scenes from the East Side opening at Connswater Shopping Centre. The project has been in the plan for two years and I'm just over the moon to see it landed here on our doorstep.
It's a real community engagement piece and it's something that's right in the heart of the community, incorporating people from that community delivering an audio-visual exhibition for the people from the area.”
Mark Rainey, Centre Manager, Connswater Shopping Centre
“This showcase creates stunning visuals for everyday shoppers. I am delighted to see it eventually launched in east Belfast after all the hard work Mark Rainey and I put it to make it happen. It is a truly collaborative piece which saw us working with Scottish designer Graeme Roger, who brought his unique style to the project. The project has a feel good factor that works perfectly with both arts and business and provides us with some positivity coming out of a pandemic. Thanks to Arts and Business NI, Connswater Shopping Centre and Wildbird Media for their input.”
Stephen Kelly, Creative Director, C21 Theatre Company
