Belfast festival 'in possible jeopardy this year' says DUP figure after funding refused following row about 'political' overtones of event

That is the view of Sarah Bunting, the DUP group leader on the council, who added that the organisers (whom she is close to) have been left “really disheartened” over the affair.

At a council meeting earlier on Friday, April 19, she had blamed the SDLP group leader Donal Lyons for the festival losing out on part of the funding it hoped for.

At that meeting, Belfast City councillors gave the go-ahead for the festival organisers to use Wedderburn Playing Fields again this summer… but whether there will be money to stage it is a different question.

The event began during 2021 under the name ‘Finaghy Cultural Festival’, bringing food trucks, music, and amusement rides to the playing fields over three days, councillor Bunting said.

It was repeated in 2022, but not 2023.

An application was made to the council for funding for the 2024 event, but was turned down this week. That followed a refusal of National Lottery funding a few weeks before.

Asked whether that scuppers the festival, she has now said: "At this point they don't know. They're holding out all hope they may find some other sort of funding."

She believes the National Lottery’s refusal was down in part to concerns raised publicly by Donal Lyons, the SDLP group leader on the council, at an earlier meeting on Monday, April 8.

At the April 8 meeting, councillor Lyons cited issues with the festival like "people drinking and carrying on and various other things, or the playing of what I believe is called blood-and-thunder music until kind of 8 or 9pm, or the accompanying band parade that marches through Finaghy Road South".

Councillor Lyons "separately" (but under the same agenda item) brought up some recent graffiti in the area, which had proclaimed that a local black activist is "not welcome".

He also said the 2021 festival had been advertised locally as "very much a political event, tied in that year to the centenary".

Councillor Bunting said the band parade he mentioned is an annual one unrelated to the festival, and that the graffiti incident had nothing whatsoever to do with the organisers or their event.

It was these racial and sectarian "insinuations" of councillor Lyons that had cost the organisers the lottery funding, she told a subsequent meeting on April 19 (councillor Lyons in turn responded that he "never in any way, shape or form suggested this festival was racist or sectarian – I reject that quite strongly").

The festival organisers probably are mostly unionists, councillor Bunting said, but that's just a reflection of the area, and “they do welcome everybody and try to get everybody involved".

She was asked if there’s a contrast with the annual Feile in republican west Belfast, which gets hundreds of thousands of pounds in public funding.

She said the Feile is “a fantastic festival” (except the regular IRA chants on the closing night), “so the fact they get funded year on year does not surprise me".

But on "the other side of the coin, those who'd maybe identify more as unionist don't see that coming forward and almost see barriers put in their way constantly": the Finaghy festival being a case in point.

Councillor Lyons was contacted but no comment was received at time of writing. The National Lottery said: “We always receive more applications than we can fund, which results in difficult decisions and only funding the projects that strongly meet our priorities.”