A festival is to go ahead in south Belfast this summer despite concerns over the nature of the event.
Earlier this month a request by the Finaghy Festival to hold an event at Wedderburn Park in August was held up after SDLP Balmoral councillor Donal Lyons successfully proposed a review on whether Belfast City Council should permit it.
He said the delay was for “comfort and clarification” on the nature of the event, which he said had in recent years had a different description in community advertising than the one it offered when asking the council for permission to use Wedderburn Park.
At the full council meeting earlier this month, Mr Lyons raised concerns over the playing of ‘blood and thunder’ loyalist band music into the evening.
At the latest meeting of the council’s Strategic Policy and Resources Committee, members granted permission for the festival after heated exchanges between the SDLP and DUP.
Event organisers, the Finaghy Community Association, were formed in 2020 in response to COVID and operated a foodbank in the area supporting elderly and vulnerable people. The group then started volunteering and organising events for the community, delivering their first festival event in 2021 and again in 2022.
The council says the festival this year in August will involve family entertainment during the day and live music at night. Other activity includes a history exhibition and walk, a seniors tea dance and a food tasting session.
At the committee meeting, Donal Lyons said: “The concern I have over this event is that I am not entirely sure what it is. I have raised this before at committee, and with senior officers right throughout the last three or four years.
“When it comes to the committee this event is described as a cultural festival, with the same wording practically every year, but when it is advertised in the community we have different advertising.
“In the first year in 2021 it was to mark the Northern Ireland Centenary, in the second year the advertising material in the community was for the Queen’s birthday, and the dates moved to facilitate that particular anniversary.”
He said: “The difficulty is how it is being perceived in and around the Finaghy area are very different from how it is being described here. I don’t necessarily think how it is perceived in Finaghy is that problematic, and when people approach me and ask me what this event is I say it is what it says on the tin, an event for the Queen’s birthday or the centenary.
“But there is the accompanying noise and disruption that goes with it.”
Councillor Lyons said he had submitted videos with music being played by traditional marching bands until “late hours” and causing “significant amounts of disruption”.
DUP councillor Sarah Bunting said the festival “has been really well attended by people from across the community”.
