Solstice Gigs & Events
ASTRL Fibres and Grow NI - Cordage workshop
Cordage making is the very ancient technique of hand twisting or braiding lengths of plant fibres to make rope. It is a slow and meditative process that renews our connection with nature and can be made with natural materials, harvested from our wild and urban spaces. Join Alison Pascoe of ASTRL Fibres and Craig Sands from Grow NI for this deep dive into the process of making cordage by hand.
Black Bones & Friends Kick Off Summer Solstice from the Brink! - Festival Opening Party
Black Bones & Friends Kick Off Summer Solstice from the Brink!
OhYeah: Acoustic Picnic
Join us for a very special Acoustic Picnic on the 14th June as part of Summer Solstice from the Brink! - a 10 day festival of culture, conversation and workshops centred on the climate crisis.
The beloved family fun event provides a space for families to come together, bring a picnic, and enjoy the lively atmosphere and creative activities. With live music from OTH Collective
'The Landscape is Changing': Framing the music sustainability toolkit
'The Landscape is Changing': Framing the sustainability toolkit & chairing a discussion with different stakeholders in the music industry.
Re-imagining the music industry for 'My Generation'
A panel discussion about a transition for the NI Music industry to a more sustainable model, considering community wealth building, cooperatives and commons, for artists, management, venues and festivals.
Polly Garnett: Polaroid workshop
Join photographer Polly Garnett for a guided Polaroid photography workshop. Participants will explore The Brink, connect with nature and learn more about the role that the arts and storytelling can play in climate action.
Tenx9 | Power Plants - presented by the NI Science Festival
We’re looking for people to share personal stories that are inspired by plants… but rooted in something deeper.
Are you a proud plant parent? A serial cactus killer? Whether it's a story of growth, grief or turning over a new leaf — if it connects to the theme (loosely or literally), we’d love to hear it. Please submit herein advance if you wish to tell a story.
Prefer to sit back and listen? Come along, grab a seat and enjoy a Sunday afternoon of humour, heart and horticulture!
From Leaf to Line: Writing workshop with Emma Must (Workshop)
Emma Must is a poet living in Belfast since 2011. She is passionate about the natural world and was formerly a full-time campaigner on environment and development issues. Emma completed a PhD in English (Creative Writing) at Queen’s, focusing on ecopoetry and ecocriticism.
She has lived and worked overseas in China, Mexico, Spain (and on the Isle of Wight!) and for shorter periods in India, South-east Asia and the USA. In the mid-nineties she lived and worked for a few months at Tinker's Bubble low impact community in Somerset.
Her poems have been published widely in magazines and journals in the UK, Ireland and elsewhere, and have received numerous prizes. Emma's first full-length poetry collection, The Ballad of Yellow Wednesday (Valley Press, 2022) was longlisted for The Laurel Prize 2023, alongside collections by Jorie Graham, Sharon Olds, Don Paterson, Michael Longley, Zaffar Kunial, Jane Clarke, Matthew Hollis, Grace Wells, and others. It was also Highly Commended in the 2023 Forward Prizes.
Emma teaches academic writing and creative writing in universities, in the community, and online.
Join Emma for a workshop in how to creatively write about the natural world.
Fibreshed Ireland: From Plants to Colours
Join natural dyer Malú Colorín from Talú in a fun workshop where we'll discover how to transform plants into colours for textiles! We will delve into the main principles to consider when choosing dyestuffs and learn tried and tested methods to get the colour to stay.
We will use a mixture of plants foraged on-site, kitchen scraps and some historical European dye plants known for their colour reliability. You will learn how to prepare the textiles and what are the best plants (and kitchen scraps) to use for dyeing.
Kombucha & Kefir Masterclass
Join Kelley Hann from Wild Life for a Kombucha & Kefir Masterclass.
Participants will be guided step-by-step through the process of making kombucha, milk kefir and water kefir.
There will be lots of tangy, fruity flavours on offer for tasting and each participant will make overnight oats with milk kefir to take home along with some kefir grains to get started.
Alice Malseed and Brink present LUMINOUS. With music by The Shrub
Brink and Alice Malseed present Luminous; a night of new theatre, performance, literature and music. This night of site-responsive performance invites audiences to experience five unique performances.
Each artist responds to the environment, light and our world.
The five short pieces will explore everything from mushrooms to queerness, pronatalism to hypercapitalism, and are set in contrasting locations such as Silent Valley and Belfast City Centre.
Join us at 5.30pm for music from The Shrub and a drink with The Sunflower Bar.
Performances starts at 7pm
End 10pm
This event has been supported by Arup and A&BNI.
Performances -
Blueprint by Sara Walmsley
Fás Aon Oíche / One Night's Growth by Ass Gaeilge
Scim (performed play-reading) by Louise Parker, directed by Colm G. Doran
Bealtaine - written and red by Deirdre Kelly
Nurturing Resistance by Louise Mathews
Presented by Harmony
Harmony is on a mission to save the world through the power of love. She is truly a one woman solution to every problem you ever had.
Blueprint
BluePrint project artist, Sara Walmsley, in collaboration with community participants and project partners co-created multiple creative outputs to amplify climate risk communication with decision-makers and communities at-risk.
A sound Installation entitled “In at Midnight and Away by Morning: The Uninvited Guest” (17mins, 2024) weaves together the voices and sounds that tell the stories of two devastating flood events that affected the people and places of Eglinton and Newtownstewart in 2017 and 2022. This piece combines poetic reflection, polyphonic harmonies of St. Eugene’s Church choir, as well as the sonification of historic and predicted rainfall data. It captures the lived experience of two communities who, in having to deal with the realities of flooding, are already learning to live with the impacts of climate change and their need for climate resilience.
Fás Aon Oíche
Fás Aon Oíche/One Night's Growth is a new bilingual (Irish/English) solo show that centres the queer, horny and freaky world of fungi. Touching on queer joy, climate grief and the power of language, the show explores what 1.5 billion years of evolution and 23,000 genders have to teach us.
Scim
Scim by Louise Parker, Directed by Colm G. Doran (performed reading)
It’s 2029: Sarah is going on terrible dates off a terrible app, her Granny Aine has just died, and the River Bann has turned to blood. Devastated and enraged by both her crumbling personal life and the frightening state of the natural world around her, Sarah travels through space and time to solve the mystery of what exactly has happened to the longest river in Ulster.
Bealtaine
Deirdre Anna Rose Kelly is a writer and performer from Letterkenny who lives in Belfast. She is a member of the Duncairn Creative Collective, and has performed her short stories extensively. Her work recently featured on BBC Radio Ulster. She feels passionate about sleeping and playing football badly.
Photo credit - Aaron Cunningham
Nurturing Resistance
By Louise Mathews. What if nurturing our communities becomes the greatest resistance? A brand new experiment in theatre, responding to a Belfast community garden.
Music by The Shrub -
The Shrub are a collective of vinyl-focused music lovers who dig out discarded gems, dubby groovers and spacey slow burners to fill out your favourite local chill out room. They run a monthly low-tempo listening lounge in The Green Room at The Black Box.
People, Planet, Pastry
Meet others interested in sustainability in your community, share local stories and ideas, and accelerate local climate action .. over a pastry.
Introduction to Fermenting Vegetables
Join Kelley Hann from Wild Life to learn the basics of fermentation, as a natural process that preserves food and increases the presence of gut-friendly bacteria. There will be an opportunity to taste at least five seasonal ferments and participants will make a classic sauerkraut (fermented cabbage) to take home.
People, Planet, Pint: Sustainability Meetup
Pop down to your local People Planet Pint meetup to find more about what's going on locally with sustainability and how you can get involved.
Collaborative Art Workshop - Bryson Arts and Play
We will be producing a collaborative piece of art using recycled materials. Facilitated by Bryson Arts and Play.
Rethinking Resources – changing attitudes to waste
How can we move to a more resource-efficient society by addressing the challenges of changing waste related behaviours? In this panel discussion we will explore how attitudes to waste are changing in Northern Ireland and what steps are needed to effectively engage the public to deal with their waste better.
Caroline McGuiness-Brooks, Repair and Share Foyle & Library of Things, Derry.
Anthony Flynn, Green Party Councillor, Belfast City Council
Dr Rachael Singleton, Chair of Sustainable NI, Behavioural Scientist and Lecturer at Ulster University
This is a free event. Please register your interest to manage numbers.
Workshop: Are your decisions waste-ful?
In this workshop we will look at common products that we buy to see what they are made of and how easily they can be recycled.
There is currently a lot of work going on to produce “greener” packaging, but what is true and what is greenwashing? This workshop will help inform you about how to make more environmentally friendly choices when purchasing.
Led by: Patrick Duggan, Sustainability Sector Specialist – Plastics Recycling, WRAP, with support from Bryson Recycling.
Paddy Duggan, Plastic Sector Specialist, WRAP – Paddy joined WRAP in April-22 bringing a wealth of experience of packaging materials after 20 years within the FMCG food and dairy industries. Paddy currently works on all Targets within the UK Plastic Pact, focusing on difficult to recycle materials. His knowledge within these sectors plus projects will increase the overall recycling rate and recycled content, contributing towards the Plastic Pact Targets.
** PLEASE NOTE - ANY FEES FOR THIS WORKSHOP ARE A DONATION TO BRINK! - THEY ARE NOT GOING TO BRYSON RECYCLING
Mending Meet Up: Repair Cafe Belfast
The Repair Cafe Belfast sewing team invite you to join them for a lunchtime Mending Meet Up. Bring a few items you've been meaning to mend and join us for this chance to tackle them in good company, with a bite of lunch, lots of craic and our experienced stitchers on hand for help and advice if needed.
All welcome - whether you are a complete beginner at mending or know your backstitch from your blanket stitch.
T-Shirt Hack Workshop with Tools For Solidarity
Join Tools for Solidarity for a hands-on T-Shirt Hack Workshop where old tees get a new lease of life! Bring your own shirt or choose from our stash, then cut, print, patch, and repurpose using a mix of DIY tools and creative flair. Whether you're mending, remaking, or making a statement, this is a chance to transform throwaway fashion into wearable art — sustainably.
Please bring your own t-shirt to upcycle, or to donate for additional words and letters. Materials will be provided.
Solstice: A Sound Circle for the Longest Day
Rooted in ancient Irish solstice traditions and the quiet symbolism of stone circles, this sound piece invites people to gather, be still, and mark the turning of the season together.
From 5pm on June 21st, a five-hour ambient composition will gradually unfold within a circular space in Belfast city centre.
BBC Radio Ulster - Solstice Broadcast live from the Brink! - Festival Closing Party
Celebrate the Summer Solstice with BBC Radio Ulster — Live from Brink! in Belfast City Centre
Folk, funk and future sounds come together for a special solstice broadcast from Belfast's bold new festival of climate, culture and conversation.
Brink! is a social enterprise using culture to engage with people on issues related to the climate crisis.
We work and play at the point of change exploring new ways to think and act in our city.
This June, Summer Solstice from the Brink! brings 10 days of culture, conversation and climate action to Belfast.
We’re also on the hunt for a new home — so every penny you chip in helps us keep creating space for bold ideas and big change.