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Feile an Phobail Belfast

Feile an Phobail, 473 Falls Road, Belfast,

South (048) 028 90 313440

Feile an Phobail
Féile An Phobail is a registered charity/company limited by guarantee, based in West Belfast, and provides a programme of activities throughout the year. It runs a major festival, the August Féile for ten days and an increasing number of specialist festivals with Draíocht, an arts festival for children and young people and Féile an Earraigh, focusing on Irish culture, music and language, as well as Féile an Earraigh, a Springtime festival featuring some of the world’s best renowned Irish traditional and folk musicians, as well as local music groups. We also run ‘Laugh at the Bank’, a weekend comedy festival which is growing every year and features a world-class line-up of stand-up comics. Féile An Phobail means ‘festival of the people’ or ‘community festival’ and was established in 1988 as a community reaction to challenge the negative and damaging portrayal of the West Belfast community. It was also a community response to funnel the tensions each August around the commemoration of Internment on August 9 into a positive celebration of the area. The August Féile, the flagship of Féile An Phobail, has grown from being a small local festival into a ten-day (or more!) festival with a reputation that attracts artists and speakers of the calibre of Oscar winner Michael Moore, acclaimed journalists and writers such as Robert Fisk and Naom Chomsky and the hottest headline performers in comedy and music such as Ardal O’Hanlon, Westlife, Girls Aloud and Christy Moore. On top of that it provides the performance arena for showcasing local talent in drama, literature and music and gives local people and visitors an opportunity to experience West Belfast in new ways by partnering with local community groups to put on open days, and organising tours, hill-walking, nature trips and other sports-day type activities for children. Féile An Phobail is first and foremost a community-led festival with a strong local committee, elected annually, together with sub-committees on different areas (Entertainments, finance, drama, for example), Working Groups and a series of established partnerships and networks with over 200 groups. It has the support and good-will of the local community as evidenced by the sponsorship from local businesses, the audience attendances, the range of events co-ordinated with local groups, the number of volunteers and the positive press coverage. However, it does not fall into the common conception of a community festival for a number of reasons. Firstly the unique location of the festival in West Belfast means that it attracts a significant number of visitors from outside the area who come out of political and historical interest. Secondly, the scale of the festival, with attendance records in excess of 250,000 people, takes it out of the normal range of community festivals. Thirdly, the content of the Féile programme which has a strong focus on debate on political and contemporary issues – be it expressed in drama, literature or in a debating forum – widens the appeal of the festival to a greater number of people from outside the area. The continuing success of Féile An Phobail is attributed to the dynamism and creativity of the people of West Belfast, and the wealth of talent and community spirit that exists here.