Holywood Shared Town Blog post - Gordon Hewitt

Mini Culture Night - Tuesday September 4th - 6pm Holywood LIbrary

Holywood Share Town – Blog – 28th August - Gordon Hewitt



On Tuesday 4th September starting at 6pm and squeezed into the confines of Holywood Library there will be a Mini Culture Night. A taster session for what is to come.



I know there will be a drummer, a saxophonist, a jazz singer, a Zimbabwean musician, some guitar players, films, local animators, storytellers. There may be a couple of cows from the Cow Parade, and there may even be a pottery exhibition. And I also know it will be chaos, organised chaos, but chaos nonetheless. It will be noisy and it will be frivolous but not hedonistic.



That’s the way Culture Nights should feel, chaotic but good chaotic. Culture Nights are cultural free-for-alls, a cultural melee. You pick and choose from the white noise around you. Whatever gets through.



On the actual Culture Night - Friday September 21st - (and maybe even for the Mini Culture Night) there will be a programme of sorts, and there will be a map so you will know for example that at approximately 7pm in the High Street Presbyterian Church, assuming that the High Street Presbyterian Church agrees to be involved, you will hear the Classical Guitar Society of Northern Ireland perform, and as soon as they finish at 7.45pm you can go outside and hear Magwere the fantastic Afrobeat band with Wilson Magwere at the helm on the Diversity stage. You might then wander up to the Holywood library where there will be pianists and artists and poets and films. You will probably pass some tribal drummers on the way



And there will be people who arrive on the night who just want to perform; there will music, dj’s and bands, Burning Codes have agreed to play, there will be performers from the Lagan Sessions at Wine and Co and up the other end of High Street, Art and Home’s Cow Parade, the Guitar Rooms will have guitar players all night, Bokhara – hopefully we will have located Bollywood dancers by Friday 21st September.



It didn’t start off like this – a couple of months ago it was just an idea – one of many that came up at the Holywood Shared Town Community meetings in March – and about 2 months ago many people said it would never happen even though they wanted it to happen. There are still some who haven’t jumped into the Culture Night juggernaut.



But they will - because it is a night of free entertainment that brings people together – businesses, community groups, local people - and they can get a flavour of what is to come on Tuesday 4th September at the Mini Culture Night.