OUTBURST ARTS
A BIT OF BACKGROUND
Outburst Arts is Northern Ireland’s award-winning queer arts organisation and annual international festival, platforming innovative and influential events in Belfast for 16 years. Through the annual Outburst Queer Arts Festival, we have supported the development of cutting edge queer arts in the city to an acclaimed international level, always ensuring that local LGBTQ+ artists, audiences and community are at the heart of our ambition to make Belfast a leading hub for queer arts, globally. We have worked with artists and activists in 28 countries and continue to grow ambitious opportunities for local talent.
Outburst commissions, develops and produces new LGBTQ+ focused work, as well as bringing the best in new queer art and performance from all over the world to Belfast. Our productions with NI artists like Stacey Gregg and Conor Mitchell have won several national awards, including two Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards. We have an ongoing development programme that includes professional support for local emerging queer artists and a public engagement programme around arts education, awareness raising and community empowerment through art, film and literature, that anyone can be part of.
We know the potential of art in inspiring and catalysing positive change in the world, one story and one great idea at a time. Let’s get together and change the narrative.
CATFLAP
CATFLAP is Outburst Arts’ acclaimed (and beautifully designed) periodical, with local and international queer writers, poets and artists invited to submit exciting new “smart queer writing with a disco heart”! Issue one attracted some of the most exciting writing talent in the country and was selected for the Irish Design Archive 2021.
You’re invited to help us warm up the printing press for issue two, to be launched at the festival this November at a special event. Your financial support will see your logo printed inside this edition, distributed to a local and international audience, with potential for brand presence at the exciting launch event.
QUEERING THE CONVERSATION
There are incredible possibilities now for making Belfast a global hub for LGBTQ+ arts and we want to be ready for it! We’re supporting upskilling for artists and community in sharing their passion and ideas through talking about art and culture, here and within a global context. We’re creating a series of lively and engaging arts and culture podcast events for this year’s festival and beyond, that incorporate training and capacity building as part of the outputs. Delivered both as in-person live recording events with guests and as pre-recorded studio installments, the podcasts will enable LGBTQ+ people to develop critical engagement, talk about ideas in art and culture, explore representation and visibility in the arts and have an autonomous voice through a community-led platform. Podcasts provide an excellent solution to the lack of diverse LGBTQ+ voices and stories in our media and provide space to explore complex topics and ideas in art through accessible language.
The outputs will be made available through Outburst’s website via worldwide podcast platforms like iTunes and Spotify that are easily accessible, have a long shelf life, promote understanding and creatively build LGBTQ+ community confidence.