Life

4 Corners Festival taking varied programme online amid Covid-19

4 Corners Festival co-founders Fr Martin Magill, pictured left, and Rev Steve Stockman. This year's festival starts on January 30. Picture by Bernie Brown
4 Corners Festival co-founders Fr Martin Magill, pictured left, and Rev Steve Stockman. This year's festival starts on January 30. Picture by Bernie Brown 4 Corners Festival co-founders Fr Martin Magill, pictured left, and Rev Steve Stockman. This year's festival starts on January 30. Picture by Bernie Brown

THE 4 Corners Festival is going fully online this year because of Covid-19, with a programme of 30 live-streamed events planned for between January 30 and February 7.

Drawing on this year's theme of 'breathe', co-founders Rev Steve Stockman and Fr Martin Magill said the festival was "trying to breathe hope and creativity into our very difficult situation".

"It is still our intention to invite people in Belfast and elsewhere to pause and take the deep breath we all need at this exceptionally trying moment in our history."

This year's keynote speaker at the inter-Church arts and culture festival will be international conflict resolution expert Professor John Paul Lederach from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

Other contributors include poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama, Jamaica-born singer-songwriter and teacher Raquel McKee, musician Duke Special and screenwriters Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson.

Domestic violence will be among the issues examined during the festival, with a panel including Nicole Jacobs, the UK's first domestic abuse commissioner, and detective superintendent Lindsay Fisher of the PSNI.

A full programme can be viewed at 4cornersfestival.com and there will be more about the festival in forthcoming editions of Faith matters.