Our Cultural Year
CNI picks some of its favourite things from 2008
Podcasts
Van Morrison - Astral Weeks podcast, featuring Bap Kennedy and Stuart Bailie.
Crumlin Road Gaol - audio prison tour with blue badge tour guide Ken Martin.
Tammy Moore Speculates - fiction writer who 'just started talking and all these dreadful things came out of my mouth.'
Online exhibitions
John McSorely - Artist is concerned with the beautiful things in life, like Italian piazzas and the setting sun.
John Harrison - 'Liam Neeson welcomes you to the Ormeau Baths Gallery. All sixteen and a half feet of him. In black and white, looking suave and sophisticated.'
Michael Hudson - 'I actually hated art at school. It was all about sticking cardboard boxes together and making sculptures and that just wasn’t me.'
Leontia Flynn - Following the publication of her second collection, Drives, the poet talks about her respect for Seamus Heaney and Catullus, learning to write and falling for Philip Larkin.
Gerald Dawe - The acclaimed poet on falling in love with the medium, admiring Mary Robinson and the exhibition of the year in northern Italy.
Reviews
Lou Reed plays Berlin - The rock 'n' roll icon wows the Waterfront Hall by bringing the masterful Berlin song-cycle to Belfast.
Juno and the Paycock - Association of Regional Theatres production revives a classic of Irish theatre.
Brian Kennedy - Former Clonard choirboy woos crowd in sell-out monastery performance.
British Seapower - The mighty British Sea Power light up Queen's Student Union.
Rising Star
Naomi Campbell - Fermanagh-born musician and visual artist.
Gentry Morris -Georgia-born singer/songwriter sets up shop in Bangor.
It really has been a jam packed cultural year at CultureNortherndIreland - 2009 has a lot to live up to!