The Context
George Best Belfast City Airport (GBBCA) is located adjacent to the Port of Belfast and provides routes from Belfast to cities in the UK and Europe.
Cahoots NI is a Belfast-based theatre company producing boldly innovative work for children and their families. Their distinctive style combines magic and illusion, physical theatre and original music. Cahoots NI tours to ever-growing audiences at home and across the world.
GBBCA was seeking a creative solution to deliver its core business objectives; the customer centric airport wanted to champion schools, children and young people as part of their ‘Best for Education’ initiative. This programme seeks to inspire, encourage and develop young people with the ambition of raising their confidence and achievement levels.
The Solution
Cahoots’ relationship with GBBCA first began in 2012, when they worked together to produce ‘Lights, Camera, Math ‘a’ Magic’.
Having secured funding through Arts & Business NI’s Invesment Programme in 2019, they were successful in rekindling this relationship again for their production entitled ‘The Secrets of Space’, which explored and unlocked the secrets of space for Key Stage 1 and 2 children across the country. The partners brought the production into a group of schools which GBBCA have adopted and work closely with.
‘The Secrets of Space’ featured two female performers from Cahoots NI, who used a large state of the art, digital LED wall to navigate the young audience members on an exploration of outer space. Using special effects, original music, magic and illusions, the wonders of the galaxy were explored in dazzling detail. With a strong female lead, they aimed to inspire girls at primary school level to see that careers traditionally perceived as being male dominated, are open to them.
‘The Secrets of Space’ was developed with leading space industry experts and featured curriculum connections for primary school audiences in STEAM learning. The performance opened with The Big Bang, introducing the young audience to how our universe was created, before journeying on to explore our solar system, space travel, life and what is ‘out there’. Throughout the performance, there was an emphasis on scale; the real secret of space is getting the scale across to each individual child - their place in the world, the Earth’s place in our solar system, and the solar system’s place within the universe.
The most recent partnership with Cahoots NI enabled GBBCA to deliver on many of its core business objectives. The project fulfilled not only their ‘Best for Education’ goals, but also their ‘Best for our Community’ programme objectives, which aim to enrich and support the local community by engaging with key stakeholders and making a real impact. It also contributed to the ‘Best for our People’ objectives, which aim to provide a workplace which invests in the skills and development of its people and enable them to reach their full potential.
“George Best Belfast City Airport & Cahoots NI share a common value and commitment to helping young people realise their aspirations and potential in fun and creative ways and this project did just that! The airport has a specific focus around schools, children and young people with a key objective to inspire, encourage and develop young people with the ambition of raising their confidence and achievement.
We were delighted to support ‘The Secrets of Space’ project, and I was able to see first-hand the talented and innovative performance at Seaview P.S, and also how well the show was received by the children and teachers alike.
Having partnered with Cahoots NI previously we wish them every success in bringing their performances to many more schools throughout NI in the future.”
Paula Bittles, George Best Belfast City Airport
“We were very grateful to George Best Belfast City Airport Community Fund for their generous sponsorship of the project. ‘The Secrets of Space’ was very well received in venues and schools alike and we feel sure that our objectives have been met. With the grant from GBBCA and match funding from Arts & Business NI, we were able to deliver a very big and technologically complex show, free of charge in a number of schools. This enabled 420 children, who would otherwise not have benefited from seeing one of Northern Ireland’s high profile theatre companies, to have a vivid and memorable arts experience”
Paul McAneaney, Cahoots NI
