SOUL SURMISE

BECOME A FRIEND OF 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL

photos: Neil Craigan 

 

So, the 2025 4 Corners Festival - the 13th - is a wrap! Ten days of drama and music and photography and panel and lecture and knitting and walking and sport. All done. Some of us still feel the Post Festival Blues.

If you were at any of this year's events then thank you. We appreciated seeing you. We pray that you were entertained but also made to think about HOME?

We are always delighted that through very generous funding and through Friends of the Festival we can offer the Festival events for FREE. 

Yet it is not FREE. The Festival costs somewhere in the region of £60,000. 

We are so blessed by those who fund the Festival. The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, the Northern Ireland Executive Office, Belfast City Council, The Belfast Linen Quarter Improvement District and Black Santa all give to us funds so that we can put the programme together and pay for our staff.

We would like to thank those who donate during the Festival. I always suggest giving what a punter feels the value of an evening is. If the event you were at was worth nothing then give nothing but if you enjoyed the event or were inspired or challenged then give what you feel it was worth.

If you think that the Festival has a place across the horizon of so many Festivals in Belfast then please support us towards Festival 14 and 15 with a one off donation.

Or please consider becoming a Friend Of The Festival. This is a group of people who give to us on a monthly basis which not helps sustain our costs throughout the year. In many ways your regular donations encourage us psychologically through the year as well as financially.

To make a donation or become a Friend of The Festival -https://www.4cornersfestival.com/donate-to-4-corners-festival/

Thank you all so much for all your support. We long to give the Festival a sustainable future. If we should lose one funder it would be difficult to continue to do what we do so we thank all of you for what you give to us.

We have lots of ideas already for 2026. Don't forget to fill out those questionnaires that help us gain funding but also help us plan for future Festivals - 4CF Questionnaires

THE POST 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL BLUES

photo: Neil Craigan

 

I never heard that idea before

Or thought about that like this

Her voice raised a deep good mood 

I wept to that guitar of his

We really don’t want to say goodbye

We believe a change is gonna come

We have come along, a long, long way

From where our trauma started from

 

Her poem took me out of here

I wanted to hold his rhyme 

Many of the lessons being learned

We learn every single time

Those colours and their adjectives

That yarn slow threading together

That little fox in that photograph

Home, here, there and wherever

 

Like a field ploughed and fertile

We sow seeds in Friday afternoon laughter

Then we help each other water and prune

Marvel that this all grows up after

I’m missing the sounds

I’m missing youse

I’m missing the sharing

I’m missing youse

I’m missing the drama

I’m missing youse

I’m missing the sport

I’m missing youse

I’m missing the craic

I’m missing youse

I’m missing the tray bakes

I’m missing youse

I’ve got one big enormous dose

Of the Post 4 Corners Festival Blues. 

I'LL CALL YOU HOME - 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2025 CLOSER

I have said for many years that worship on a Sunday should never be a cul-de-sac. It should never be sent singing up to God and remain there. God never meant worship to be just about him. Indeed, that is why in Romans 12 Paul wrote that our real worship is when we sacrifice ourselves to God for love and service.

Worship is not a cul-de-sac but a highway out into the week that is ahead. In worship we remember the greatness of God and the brokenness of ourselves, we re-align in God's order of things, we offer ourselves and fix up or fuel up for the week ahead.

So, at the end of the 4 Corners Festival. On our last Sunday night we don't want to be caught up in a festival cul-de-sac. We don't want to gather up the week's events and horde them for our own enjoyment. We want to end our week by crashing out into the rest of the year to bring morsels of peacemaking across our wonderful but wounded city. 

So at this year's festival we will close with a look at the week's events but then Rev Neil Craigan, Belfast born but now a pastor in White Bear Lake, Minnesota will draw the different perspectives of home that we have seen or heard or felt and consider how we can go to find hime for ourselves and help create one for others.

About 25 years ago, my friend Rev Doug Gay who closed last year's Festival spoke at the wedding of Iain Archer who has sold out two of our Festival gigs at the Lyric Theatre. In That sermon who spoke of how we were heading towards home but that as we journey, home comes to meet us on our way.

How does that affect the way we live?

To finally take us out of 4 Corners Festival 2025 and into the rest of our lives Dana Masters who will sing throughout the evening will sing one final song. I'll Call You Home is a song about our wee piece of earth. It is also the story of how one young African American woman traveled here and found and made home. It seemed the most appropriate way to end a Festival called Home.

We are then thrilled that Dana's husband, Andrew, who is pastor at Lagan Valley Vineyard will lead us out in refection and prayer. Then we can go... 

 

I'LL CALL YOU HOME is on FEBRUARY 9, 2025 at 7pm in St Colmcille’s Church, 191a Upper Newtownards Road, BT4 3JB

BOOK HERE

 

SOUL SURMISE INTERVIEW WITH PETER GARDNER OF THE PEACE LOOM

For the week of this year's 4 Corners Festival (2025) we are excited to have Peace Loom situated in 2 Royal Avenue inviting anyone and everyone off the street to do a wee stitch of at the french knitting loom. Please come along!

I took time to have a chat with Peter Gardner half of the Gardner & Gardner art duo who came up with the idea, to give us the why, how and what of the loom.

 

Very briefly, who are Peter and Heidi Gardner?

We are a husband-and-wife artist duo, working under the name Gardner & Gardner.  Heidi has a background in art history before becoming a maker and Peter combines their shared art practice with his role as the Church of Scotland minister to the visual art communities of Glasgow. 

 

Tell me what was the very first thought that sparked the Peacemakers Loom?

The genesis of ‘Peacemakers’ grew out of our sense of helplessness in the face of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.  We began to focus on the idea of peacemaking at a personal and relational level, distilling it down to the smallest of actions, a simple stitch, made in response to the conflict we encounter within our lives and the wider world.

 

What are you trying to do?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in the 1930’s, ‘ Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking, when they should be listening,’  ‘Peacemakers’ offers an openhearted hospitable space, where we share in the task of knitting on the loom.  We wait, welcome, knit and listen, without hurry, trusting that the Spirit of God is already present.  Sometimes there is silence and sometimes there are stories, our work is to listen.

 

How does it actually work?

The ‘Peacemakers’ loom is a circular, 1.81m in diameter, French knitting loom, which we designed and fabricated in 2014. It is made from birch plywood, beech dowels and sisal twine.  

At the start of the week, we cast on donated yarn and make the first row of stitches.  Everyone is welcome to join us and share in the repetitive, contemplative, simple action of knitting on the loom. Over the week as thousands of stitches are added, the layers of knitted yarn start to pile up on the floor.  Made by many hands, a single textile piece slowly builds, reflecting the temporary community of peacemakers who have gathered around the loom.

 

What interesting places have you had the Loom?

Each venue has its own unique character.  In St Giles’ Cathedral, during the Edinburgh Festival, we welcomed people from all over the world.  At universities around Scotland, we have walked the loom with students pausing between classes.  In Coventry Cathedral, the ‘Peacemakers’ loom was installed below one of Ralph Beyer’s carved inscriptions, ‘Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest…’

 

You must have one or two stories...

What is said at the loom stays at the loom!  Part of the covenant of trust that forms between host and guest is that the stories shared at the loom belong to the folk who shared them, therefore they are not ours to tell.

 

How does a normal day or week go?

Over ten years of walking the loom with visitors we are constantly surprised…  We firmly believe that ‘Peacemakers’ is not about the wood, or the wool, it’s a mystery, a work of the Holy Spirit.

 

How do you judge the success of a Loom?

If, on any day, one person finds the peace they need or feels they’ve been heard at the loom, that is a cause for rejoicing.   

 

What do you do with the end piece?

The communal action of knitting on the loom produces a very long narrow tube of loosely knitted stitches.  Revealing all the different yarns, this single textile piece symbolises the breadth of stories shared and all the folk who walked the loom with us.  It is measured, rolled into a ball and given to the community who made it.

 

It'll be your first time in Ireland, never mind Belfast. How might that be different?

We are very aware that we are bringing ‘Peacemakers' to a fast-changing city with a long history.  Coming as guests, we are unsure of how our experience may be different but we know that over the past ten years ‘Peacemakers’ has always offered a place of welcome and attentive listening and that’s what we will do in Belfast.

 

Are you looking forward to it?

Last year, we were over in Belfast for a few days for a wedding and we fell in love with the city. We are really excited to be returning, this time with the loom, for the 4 Corners Festival.

 

Please come and see us and add your stitch. The Loom will be set up in 2 Royal Avenue from Saturday Feb 1st to Feb 8th (2025)... Opening Times:

Sat 1st: 12-5pm

Sun 2nd - Fri 7th: 10am-5pm

Sat 8th: 10am-3pm

 

 

 

 

IF YOU HAVE TICKETS YOU WON'T USE...

I know how it is.

You see a concert or event and you want to go. You book tickets immediately. You add a few tickets for friends that might want to come with you. 

Particularly when it is free, grab a few tickets quickly. 

As the event arrives however lots might have changed.

The friends you grabbed tickets for were not free when you told them.

Maybe your own circumstances have changed. You had forgotten about that work event, church meeting or that it was your best friend’s birthday.

They say that free events can expect a 30% drop off on tickets booked. We at the 4 Corners Festival have experienced the reality of that in the past. Events with empty chairs that shouldn’t have any.

The worst of it is that there are people who want in to the event but can’t because it is “sold out”. The seats don’t need to be empty. People are disappointed that they are not in them. 

So… if you are sitting on ANY tickets for 4 Corners Festival events that you know that you are not going to need please let us know. AND TELL US.. ASAP -  [email protected]

Thank you so much for your amazing support for the Festival. Sell out events is amazing. There are tickets left for some events.

 

BOOK TICKETS HERE

CLARE SANDS AT 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2025

I am imagining that a lot of you have not heard of Clare Sands. If you are a fan of Irish trad and the modern refreshing of it then let me lead you to her recordings and encourage you to come to the first Sunday night of 4 Corners Festival (February 2, 2025) where she will be performing a few songs.

I got tipped off about Clare through my friend Jonny Clark who had Clare sing at one of his Borderland evenings.

Clare is a 6th generational traditional musician who sings and plays a plethora of instruments and yes with a name like Sands she is a cousin of Tommy. 

When I ransacked Bandcamp to hear her songs I was blown away with her blend and blur of the two languages, Irish and English weaving through the same song. 

Musically she has been called fearless and again her blending and blurring of the contemporary and the traditional has her in the same conversation as Lankum or Trú. Her eponymous record was in the Top 5 Irish Times folk albums of 2022.

Two other things drew me deeper into her work. Her collaborations and her little projects. He has recorded with the Hothouse Flower Liam Ó Maonlaí, I Have A Tribe and Susan O’Neill as well as Tommy Sands to name but a few. 

She also loves wee interrelated journeys in her work. Her most recent EP Gormacha’, crosses Ireland on land and sea between the island’s four most extreme geographical points - Mizen, Malin, Dunmore and Wicklow Head.

On an evening when Lorna Gold will be talking about our common home, I thought there was no better human to take us into our piece of earth than Clare Sands. 

Prepare to be mesmerised. 

Clare Sands plays the 4 Corners Festival on Sunday February 2, 2025 @ Jennymount Methodist Church @ 7pm. FREE!

BOOK HERE

GLENN PATTERSON AT HOME AT 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2025

It was a personal thrill that the first name we had booked for 4 Corners Festival 2025 was novelist Glenn Patterson. Over the coffee when we asked Glenn to become involved in the Festival we asked him where he thought of as home. He didn't miss a beat and said, "Belfast city centre". 

Glenn is a Belfast man who loves our city and has spent his life writing about it. He now heads up the Heaney Centre at Queen University, inspiring a generation of writers. 

For the theme of HOME? he's a perfect choice. He will be sharing the stage with poets including the very talented Scott McKendry.

Here's one of my reviews... of Gull in 2016.

 

Today, friends started posting photos of Delorean cars on social media. What gives? Well, it appears that it is the 35th Anniversary of the making of the iconic car and many owners have traveled across the world to celebrate in the city where it was built; Belfast.

When I was a first year at Queen’s University I took the train past the Delorean factory every Friday night and Monday morning. The train track went right past the Dunmurry factory and we always stopped reading the NME to gaze out the windows at these futuristic cars. 

As an nineteen year old from up the country I think I was unaware at the incongruity of this familiar scene. This was the Belfast of bombs and guns and I started University just a month after the last Republican Hunger Striker starved to death. It is really only in my fifties that I have finally come to terms with the abnormal world that I grew up in. The inhumanity that humans showed humans in our Troubles is almost inexpressible. 

That an American maverick entrepreneur would decide to build a factory on the outskirts of Belfast at such a time was more ridiculous than I thought in my wee mind. We did still enjoy the view as we passed for those short number of months before it all went pear shaped - the flighty fickle car salesman that was Dolerean, the iron lady Prime Minister and a world recession all coming down on it at once!

It was the recent novel by Glenn Patterson that opened me up to the story of Delorean, West Belfast, hunger strikes and Margaret Thatcher. I love Patterson’s work which always opens me up to the social, and I would say spiritual world, of my home city. In Gull, named after the shape of the Delorean, he gives us these events through two ordinary people caught up from different sides of the story.

Edmund Randall is Delorean’s puppet, fixer on the ground and Liz is one of the work force. She is an ordinary if tough woman from west Belfast who finds a lifeline of hope in this new factory on her doorstep.

The novel, as Patterson always does, gives this fascinating part of our history and automobile history that was also tied up in movie history, when a car built in Dunmurry became Michael J Fox’s way Back to the Future. Imagine that. Our wee city!

I was particularly drawn to the fact that the Hunger Strikes were happening at the same time. I was interested that people from Republican Twinbrook and Loyalist Seymour Hill worked together but used different gates. I was also amused that Patterson exposed Margaret Thatcher iron will not against the Republican Hunger Strikers but against Delorean, in not funding the factory when the finances went down the plug.

Patterson says that the book is fiction “apart from the bits you couldn’t make up”. I have to say it left me looking for a real history of the Delorean years. If the workers that Liz represents in Gull could write a Memoir that would be one fascinating read and helpful contribution to our recent history.

In the meantime, Patterson has given us another wonderful novel… but I’d love to know what the bits were that he couldn’t make up!

 

BOOK HERE

 

4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2025 - WHY I AM EXCITED!

The 4 Corners Festival is upon us again - January 31st-9th. For 13 years now January has had that added little bit of added adrenaline running through it as we count down, finalise detail and do press ahead of that week of utter joyous madness. 

If you had asked me if we would still be going for a 13th Festival when Fr Martin Magill and I came up with the idea in his Lenadoon Presbytery in September 2012 I would not have believed it. Neither Martin nor I have have PhDs in running Festivals, In fact neither of us have a PhD in anything.

Yet here we are, excited again. Most years the planning committee gets together and we ask how on earth we will compete with last year’s Festival. Yet, there are always new ideas. I can safely say that we don’t feel at all tired or doing the same old. Every year has seen new speakers, new artists and new ideas.

One huge innovation in 2025 will be the Peace Loom. Glasgow couple Heidi and Peter Gardner appeared at the very last event of last’s year’s Festival. Over for a wedding they came to hear their friend Doug Gay speak. I got speaking to them afterwards about their Peace Loom and thought that we should have that.

Peacemakers is a large-scale French knitting loom. Open to the public, in our case at 2 Royal Avenue, anyone can come in and do a bit of crafting. By week’s end a city have created something unique and, as they weave, stories and chat get shared across the Loom. A fixture at recent Edinburgh Festivals, do not miss your chance.

While you are in 2 Royal Avenue you can check out our photographic Our Common Home Exhibition. Westcourt Camera Club have taken amazing photographs to highlight issues of environmental responsibility on our own doorstep. 

Scattered across the Festival are new names. The theology is brought by, Trinity College Prof, Siobhan Garrigan on a theology of home in a homeless world and Lorna Gold a lecturer at Maynooth University and world leader in environmental issues helping us look after our common home. Our closing event that we like to see as a sending out after the Festival sees Friend Of The Festival Rev Neil Craigan inspire us with the help of Dana Masters’ amazing voice and songs and Dana’s husband Andy, a Vineyard pastor, too.

The arts. Well, Ivor Novello winner Iain Archer has sold out two gigs at the Lyric in less than 24 hours, Nuala McKeever’s one woman play wasn’t far behind as was Fr Martin and Brian Houston’s look at Belfast street names. Glenn Patterson is doing a literary night so don’t miss that.

Of course there are seminars, knitting gatherings and networking events. Songwriting for 6th Formers, sport for early teens, a play for Primary School children. There are walks and litter picks. We will be doing the BBC Radio Ulster Sunday service. 

Everything is about bringing Belfast together. All the events will throw different perspectives on this year’s theme of HOME? The aim is always reconciliation. With that in mind there is a panel event that will ask where we are on that particular journey here in Northern Ireland. 

How well is Northern Ireland progressing on the path to reconciliation? What obstacles do we face and what approaches should we be taking to build on the work that has been done and bring reconciliation home Former paramilitaries Davy Adams and Spike Murray will be joined by former Women’s Coalition leader Monica McWilliams and Nicola Brady who heads up the British Council of Churches to discuss where we have come and not come. 

It is all about to begin. So many opportunities. Make sure you make the most of it. 

Everything is FREE - BOOK HERE 

SIOBHAN GARRIGAN - HOME IN A TIME OF HOMELESSNESS - 4 Corners festival 2025

Siobhan Garrigan’s name has come up in 4 Corners Festival planning meetings for years. So, how delighted are we that she is coming to speak at the 2025 Festival.

Why have we been so keen to have her. Well, Siobhan is a Professor at Trinity College in the School Of Religion. Her academic interest is dealing with social issues and theologising them.  For example, she writes about the Irish Peace process and brings worship to bear on it in her book The Real Peace Process: Worship, Politics and the End of Sectarianism.

Let me give you an insight into how the planning group works. We had already come up with this year’s theme as HOME? Someone then suggested Siobhan yet again. Quickly someone googled Siobhan’s name and says to the group, “You’ll never believe this but her new book is called A Theology of Home in a Time of Homelessness.”

We asked her to pick her day. Whatever day Siobhan was free we were having her. 

There are very few things that are more important to theologise in 2025 than home in a homeless world. We have large masses of the world leaving homes destroyed by war and famine for new homes very far away. There is also a local homeless crisis across Ireland and the UK. 

Siobhan has said that “Theology needs to offer a clearer account of the idea of ‘home’ if Christians are to be effective in combating homelessness in today’s world” and that “we need to look more carefully at how ‘home’ is used in wider societal debates such as nationalism, sectarianism and Islamaphobia.”

She speaks of the Christmas tradition of lighting a candle in the window when Mary and Joseph are looking for a home for the baby Jesus to be born, “It is an affirmation of our place in this world and of God’s desire to make God’s home right here, right now among us; but, it is home for the Other. For the one yet to come. What I have then, in terms of material effects, or familial love, or societal bonds I have only with a light in their window, in readiness to give away, in openness to the Other.”

As our entire Festival in 2025 looks at what home might feel like, every artist and speaker will give us glimpses of that from many different perspectives. Without doubt though the theology for our week will be laid out by Prof Siobhan Garrigan on Tuesday February 4th at 7.30pm in St Comgall’s on Divis Street, Belfast BT12 4AQ.

FREE - BOOK HERE

DR LORNA GOLD at CARING FOR OUR COMMON HOME - 4 Corners Festival 2025

Massive BREAKING NEWS in the world of Environmentalism this week is that Dr Lorna Gold has been appointed as Executive Director of the Laudato Si’ Movement.

What a thrill this is for us on the 4 Corners Festival planning group as it means that one of Lorna's first public appearance since the announcement will be at our wee Festival this Sunday night!

When we decided that the theme of the 4 Corners Festival 2025 was HOME? we first thought that it was obligatory that we deal with the planet as our common home and the second thought was that Dr Lorna Gold was the woman to do it. 

HOME? It might be the house we shelter in, the street that that house is on, the neighbourhood where we locate that street, the village, town or city of that neighbourhood or the country or island that the city is part of. Beyond that earth is our common home. Like a leak in the roof of our house, something goes wrong with our planet’s ecosystem will impact us. Indeed the latter will impact us all.

St Francis of Assisi seems to have been concerned about the dangers to planet earth 800 years before us. Centuries before industrial revolutions and capitalistic unaccountability he reminded us in a canticle that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life.

Eight centuries later his namesake, Pope Francis, wrote an encyclical Laudato Si’ again about the care of our common home. It was a letter that caught the imagination, not only for the Catholic Church world wide but across denominations and beyond that into a secular society pondering an environmental catastrophe. I remember Fr Martin Magill and I being involved in a think tank at Queen’s University under the direction of Dr John Barry.

Then in 2022 Pope Francis asked five frontline leaders, in places where their habitats were in danger, to come to Rome and tell their stories. This became a very beautiful yet frightening film called The Letter. We screened The Letter during the 2023 4 Corners Festival. 

Lorna Gold was one of those who accompanied those frontline leaders on their journey and features herself in The Letter. 

Although originally from Scotland, Lorna works as a part time teacher at Maynooth University as well as being an independent consultant on climate change. Among other weighty positions, she is vice-chair of the board of the Global Catholic Climate Movement, the movement set up to implement Pope Francis teaching on the environment globally. 

Her most recent book Climate Generation – Awakening to our Children’s Future seeks to present climate science and crisis in everyday speak and tells her own story of wakening up to the ecological emergency as a mother, academic and activist.

Hence, our first invitation to speak about our common home. This is a world leader in the environmental dilemmas we all face from both a scientific and a theological perspective with a whole lot of subjective thoughts thrown in.

What an opportunity to hear a leading thinker and practitioner in her field and ask together how we look after Belfast, our particular common home. 

Not only that but on the same night we have music from the amazing fearless Irish trad singer and instrumentalist Clare Sands. Read my blog about Clare - HERE

 

Dr Lorna Gold is the main speaker at Caring For Our Earthly Home at 4 Corners Festival 2025 on Sunday February 2nd, 2025 - Free! BOOK IN HERE