Derry’s Waterside Together Festival to bring shared green spaces to life over seven days
The Waterside Together Festival takes place over September 13-19, with a host of events in the eastbank’s shared green spaces.
Programmes will be delivered in parks, greenways and community spaces, targeting a range of participants including families, children and young people, older people, and members of the BAME community.
Highlights include a Mini Festival day on Saturday, September 13, at Woodburn Urban Park with In Your Space Circus.
Donegal Sports Partnership will also be running a pop-up Active Play event with outdoor games and a mini orienteering circuit.
There will storytelling under the trees with Marianne McShane of the Armstrong Storytelling Trust and foraging tours around the area with Keeper of the Ways.
Rachel Melaugh, Creative Director at In Your Space Circus, said: "We are delighted to be working with Waterside Neighbourhood Partnership to re-imagine the shared space at Woodburn Urban Park with the Waterside Together Festival.
"Audiences can expect amazing circus shows, circus and drumming workshops, face painting and comedy, music and stilt walking acts.
"As a Derry/Londonderry-based arts organisation, we are passionate about delivering work in outdoor spaces and engaging with audiences from every area of the city and beyond.
On the morning of Sunday, September 14, the public are invited to get creative with Art in the Park for families on Ebrington Green (just to the right of the Peace Bridge), with art facilitators Lisa Kelly and Sinéad Crumlish.
Children of all ages will have a chance to make clay shapes and prints with the ubiquitous kitchen staples: potatoes, celery and peppers.
And in the afternoon there will be a Dance Picnic with Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company at the Currynierin Community Centre.
A selection of sweet and savoury bakes from Oui Bakery will be provided but feel free to bring along something to share!
For seven days there will be something happening in a different green space from a dusk dander up Corrody Hill with Far and Wild, foraging expeditions with Keeper of the Ways’ Claire Thompson in Kilfennan Valley Park, children’s story time at Irish Street Community Centre with Marianne McShane, meditation and mindfulness sessions with Kadampa Meditation Centre in St Columb’s Park and Currynierin Community Association, yoga at Woodburn Urban Park with Inishowen Yoga, a repair café with Repair & Share Foyle at Lincoln Court Youth & Community Centre, a creative movement and strength workshop for women aged 30-55 with ecosomatic educator Gail Mahon – bringing women back to Corrody Country Park and encouraging them to reclaim the area after recent attacks on women in the vicinity, and, on culture night there will be a special outdoor screening of Rear Window (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock at Woodburn Urban Park.
Tansy Cowley, Project Coordinator for Waterside Together, said: “It has been a privilege to work with Catholic, Protestant, and BAME communities in preparing our festival. It isn’t just about an event—it’s about neighbours becoming collaborators, strangers becoming friends, and communities weaving themselves together into something bigger than ourselves.
"We hope the festival will encourage people who may not always feel comfortable in parts of the Waterside to see these areas differently—to come back, spend time, and build new connections.”
Sue Divin, Council’s PEACE Programme Manager, said: “The Waterside Together Festival is about bringing people and communities together across the Waterside area and beyond.”