The Out to Lunch Festival is kicking off this weekend from the January 5-28, bringing with it a much needed cultural bite to what is notoriously the longest and darkest month of the year.
Celebrating 13 years of successful festivals, the utterly unique and totally boutique Out to Lunch experience provides a cultural feast of music, comedy, spoken word poetry, and theatre, with a thrilling mix of familiar favourites and fresh talent.
Out to Lunch Director, Sean Kelly said: “Out to Lunch’s ethos is to make Belfast feel like a truly European city with a vibrant and year-round cultural life. From major writers such as Jonathan Meades and Bernard MacLaverty through to poetry, comedy, film, and music from across the globe, Out to Lunch offers sustenance for the mind and body.
“For £7, we offer audiences a tasty lunch and a world-class show – a tidy little deal we’re particularly proud of! People should move quickly though, the ‘sold-out’ signs are going up already on the shows we’ve announced.”
Noirin McKinney, Director of Arts Development at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, added: “The Arts Council is delighted to support the 2018 Out to Lunch Festival with National Lottery and public funding. The festival is a major attraction for locals and visitors to the city every year, with the unique programme offering something for everyone, and making a great contribution to the creative life and economic regeneration of Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter.”
The Out to Lunch music line-up includes folk legend Shirley Collins,the acclaimed psychedelic twosome Moon Duo, and the heady afro-electronic swirl of Ibibio Sound Machine, as well as Kraftwerk’s Wolfgang Flür, Hazel O’Connor & Cormac De Barr, Yola Carter, The Music of Cat Stevens/Yusuf, The 4 of Us, The Oh Hellos, The Story of Carole King & James Taylor, The Iconettes, Terri Hooley, Dave Arcari, Opera for Lunch, Lau, GoGo Penguin, Booka Brass Band, and DJ Yoda’s Stranger Things Mixtape!
The spoken word and literature programme boasts one of the great Irish men of letters Bernard MacLaverty, the hi-priestess of rhyme Hollie McNish, the storytelling phenomenon that is tenx9, and pop-cultural heavyweight Jonathan Meades, as well as Tony Walsh and Cosey Fanni Tutti (formerly of Throbbing Gristle) reading from her hugely acclaimed memoir Art, Sex, Music.
A bumper comedy line-up features festival favourite Andrew Maxwell, the deliciously-scathing Fern Brady, ‘I Daniel Blake’ star and acclaimed stand-up Dave Johns, and impressionist Jan Ravens, as well as Iain Lee doing his much-loved Rabbit Hole Podcast LIVE, plus Robin Ince, Joanne McNally, Adam Kay and the unforgettable Alison Spittle.
Gluten free, protein rich, and bursting with vitamins, Out to Lunch 2018 reaches the places other festivals can’t. It’s the only prescription in town to beat those post-holiday January blues!
To check out the full menu, go to www.cqaf.com