The Context
Forestside Shopping Centre is a busy shopping centre located in Newtownbreda in south Belfast. Home to almost 40 traders, the bustling mall offers food, drink and a wide variety of retail options for its customers, as well as regular pop up live entertainment and visual showcases.
Belfast Guitar Festival is the first guitar-based festival in the capital of Northern Ireland, giving a platform for the best musical talent that the province has to offer.
A key objective for Forestside is to engage with the under 25 age group, future shoppers in the Centre. The shopping centre wanted to form a partnership to creatively put the mall on the radar of this demographic, particularly with younger men, who may not be regular visitors.
The Solution
The debut of the Young Guitarist Competition was in 2018, and saw prize money of £500 being donated by Forestside Shopping Centre. Following this, in 2019 Forestside entered in to a partnership with the Belfast Guitar Festival, to run the sponsored Forestside Singer Songwriter Competition, giving young artists the opportunity to play in front of a live audience.
Forestside noted that that there were some extremely talented young guitarists who engaged with the project and wrote their own original music; however, it had become apparent that entrants to the Singer Songwriter Competition had a strong female bias. Forestside wanted to address that bias, and using funding from Arts & Business NI, created a Young Guitarist Competition, which was likely to engage more young men.
The Young Guitarist Competition 2019 invited guitarists under 25 years old to submit a video of themselves performing a cover version of their chosen song. The submissions were judged by a selected panel and six finalists then had the opportunity to work with industry expert mentors (Paul McMordie, Gary Lutton and John Tracey) to produce an original piece to play live at the Crescent Arts Centre as part of the Belfast Guitar Festival 2019. An overall winner was announced on the day of the performance, receiving a cash prize of £500, a promotional video shoot and two days professional studio time.
With the support of Forestside, competition applications went up by 30% year on year in 2019, and the standard of many applications was of a professional level. The festival sponsorship was successful in helping the centre to gain brand profile with their target demographic, and build their audience base.
“The aim of the Young Guitarist Competition is to nurture, develop and celebrate new talent in the music industry. Both ourselves and Forestside recognise that many barriers exist for young people in terms of accessing professional development in the Arts, and in this case the music industry in particular. Providing the opportunity for a young person to receive mentorship, and the chance to record, perform and promote themselves as an artist, has the potential to be a hugely transformative experience for participants. All the finalists benefitted from the creative mentoring process, not to mention the kudos and confidence-building as a result of being shortlisted, whilst Forestside achieved its strategic objectives of engaging the community, particularly their target demographic of under 25’s.”
Paul McMordie, Festival Director, Belfast Guitar Festival
“Now in its 3rd year the partnership of Forestside with the Belfast Guitar Festival has gone from strength to strength. To support a small festival that is ‘by the artists for the artists’ just felt right for Forestside. To be able to develop a showcase within that for Northern Ireland’s very best young guitarists is something that we are very proud of. To be able to put the spotlight on Northern Ireland’s talented youngsters in a field that is sometimes overlooked until they actually become world famous is a privilege.”
Lee Cutler, Centre Manager, Forestside
