This is the Community Arts Edition of The Monthly - March 2026. We focus on community arts, community artists, facilitators and communities of artists, as well as the projects of Community Arts Partnership (CAP). We also focus on community arts organisations locally and internationally.
CAP was moving office during December and early January. The organisation has relocated to: 551-555 Lisburn Road, Belfast, BT9 7GQ and the space is now open for room bookings. You can ring
02890923493 and speak to Gordon if you want to book our larger meeting space or the smaller workshops spaces or email
Gor...@capartscentre.com.
Getting back to The Monthly, this issue we open with Community Arts Partnership's Chief Executive Officer, Conor Shields' CAPtain's blog, offering the final section in a series of reflections aiming to reframe the four powerful and interconnecting words, Authorship, Participation, Authorship and Ownership into a series, to re-examine a quarter of a century of creative determination - from above and below - and where we find ourselves today. It's a small reflection of policy and outcomes in his own corner of the sector. The final post looks at Agency and the 4 A's, Access, Agency, Authorship and Active Ownership.
From there we look at the work of The Irish Palette, a group of artists from all across the island of Ireland, which includes Community Arts Partnership's own TRASH Fashion Project Co-Ordinator, Heather Douglas, who work together to organise group exhibitions. The organisation has an exhibition coming up in Belfast in April and we talk to members who have been part of the process of developing The Irish Palette.
The Monthly speaks to the Director of the Imagine! Belfast Festival of Politics and Ideas, Mags White-O'Kane, about the changes which have taken place over the last 18 months when she took over the job of managing the festival. She talks about cultural shifts, the need for respectful discussion and debate, the importance of ensuring financial viability and the size and scale of the festival. She also talks about the increased component of the arts in this year’s programme.
We then talk with artist, Clinton Kirkpatrick, who has an exhibition "Garden of Eden", running throughout the week of the festival. This new work is a reflection on significant changes Clinton has undertaken in his life over the last few years; becoming a foster parent, working more in the studio and in the process looking at the question of homophobia, from a personal as well as societal standpoint.
We finish up with a short piece on writing songs from Dermot Rooney and Lise McGreevy discusses her latest project on the question of children and the Irish Famine.
So, as always in The Monthly, Community Arts Edition, plenty of material to sift through from the world of community arts, from organisations to community artists working locally and internationally.
CAP is funded by The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, National Lottery Good Causes, Belfast City Council and
Halifax Foundation for Northern Ireland
