What is the difference between Belfast City Centre and yoghurt? Yoghurt has a live, active culture. This joke has been going around Belfast for quite a while now and on weekday evenings between 5.30 and 6 p.m. it is easy to see why. One minute the city streets are full of shoppers, workers and schoolchildren and the next minute the arteries around City Hall are deserted. A local says people tend to stay away from the city centre at night: "It's a throwback to the Troubles".
Things are changing however and St Anne's Cathedral looms large over the district where life is being breathed back into Belfast's inner-city. Laganside Corporation, the company in charge of the regeneration of the 30 acres of city-centre land bounded by Dunbar Link, York Street, North Street and Waring Street, has named it: "the Cathedral Quarter". For those looking for a neat analogy, it has also become known as Belfast's Temple Bar.
The only similarities so far are the cobbled streets and the teenage skateboarders who congregate in the area. The nearby art college, which had planned to relocate, has been persuaded to stay because of Laganside's plans. Just down the road stands a shopping arcade, beautiful in its shabby splendour. The small but perfectly formed North Street Arcade dates from the 1930s, just one of a handful in the UK with a glass arched ceiling. Only a few of the units in this listed building are occupied. A developer has bought the unique pedestrian walkway and a number of other buildings in the quarter, and demolition is a real possibility.
One of the arcade's units is the temporary home of the first Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival which begins on Monday. Festival director, Sean Kelly, sits at an ancient computer looking justifiably pleased with himself. The programme he has put together - for what has been described as "the problem teenage sister" of the well-heeled Belfast Festival at Queens - rivals more established events on this island's arts calendar.
For example, UK artist Beth Orton, the funky folk songstress who recently packed out the Olympia Theatre in Dublin, will play to 250 lucky punters in O'Neills pub. Supergirly, the comic duo which has been hailed as the next French and Saunders after being booked for Elton John's birthday party last year, will do a set in the city's latest gay bar, The Kremlin. Germaine Greer is on the bill, as is comedian Rob Newman (formerly of Newman and Baddiel). Local content in the Laganside-funded festival is strong too: events include a performance by Belfast songwriter Ursula Burns in the John Hewitt pub, while author Bernard McLaverty will give readings and discuss his work.
Unwilling to take too much credit himself, Kelly says that he had a number of good partners in local companies, such as production company Northern Visions and Catalyst Arts. He was also helped by the fact that post-Agreement Belfast has a certain cachet: "I have been taken aback by the level of goodwill that a number of artists have shown," he says. Kelly stresses that the new arts festival has not been set up in opposition to the two major arts events, the Belfast Festival at Queens and the West Belfast event, Feile an Phobail. The general perception is that the Belfast Festival appeals to the middle classes of South Belfast while Feile an Phobail focuses more on community than arts and, with events such as the Bobby Sands Freedom Awards, is aimed at a broadly nationalist constituency.
"If it is about anything, this festival is about reclaiming the city centre for all citizens of Belfast," explains Kelly. "We are trying to re-imagine the city centre as the thriving, integrated, cosmopolitan place it was at one time.
"We are appealing to the less traditional arts attendants by staging events in less inhibiting venues, such as pubs and cafes. It is about breaking down barriers, it is about pluralism and making arts more accessible."
Much of the Quarter's 30 acres is a trail of dereliction, of run-down buildings positioned around a maze of cobbled streets. Most traffic just passes through after dropping off deliveries to the warehouses and the eclectic range of enterprises that has kept the area alive. The Quarter is the home of the only circus school in the UK, a shop selling handmade flutes, a bespoke cobblers (see right), a theatrical make-up company and, at the Belfast City Skinworks, a body-piercing and tattoo specialist who answers to the name of Skull.
In the 18th century, the Quarter was a bustling financial district where two banks built impressive headquarters. While Laganside envisages a historical, cultural and commercial quarter that tourists will flock to, local companies are anxious that, over the next five years, the mistakes of Temple Bar are avoided while the successes are emulated.
Dave Hyndman, of Northern Visions, fears a "blitzkrieg mentality" that will eradicate the unique character of the area. "Sites should be released to sympathetic developers," he says. Those with fears that they will be squeezed out by developers charging high rents are being appeased by Laganside, who say they will provide space for low rent. In the meantime, the inaugural Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival offers a taste of what is to come. According to Sean Kelly, tickets for all events have been selling steadily: "There is definitely a willingness to come back to the city centre".
The Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival runs from May 1st to 7th. For more information, tel 04890-232403. Website: www.cqaf.com
