Free curry for Belfast Culture Night crowds

A giant dinner table will be set up along the length of Donegall Street in the city centre for hungry revellers on September 16.

Volunteer chefs will whip up a feast from the leftovers of the autumn harvest in one of the highlights of the arts festival. Fourteen farmers and distributors have donated 1.5 tonnes of vegetables.

Kerry Melville, spokeswoman for the Belfast Food Network which promotes sustainability and helped organise the event, said: "We've been blown away by the generosity of participating farms, distributors and our partners and hope that thousands of people enjoy their free meal at Culture Night.

"All of the food donated for Feed The 5000 is surplus food that might otherwise have gone to waste.

"Our local food system can be drastically improved if people choose to buy their food from local farms, producers and suppliers and then use all the food they buy."

Feed The 5000 is an entirely environmentally sustainable event, using donated surplus vegetables, plates which can be composted and ensuring the environmentally-friendly disposal of all waste.

It will be Belfast's biggest and greenest dinner party ever, organisers said.

Culture Night spokesman Adam Turkington said: "This year's Culture Night is all about people coming together to break bread, a shared sense of community and the idea that we have more in common than apart.

"The big table along Donegall Street to Feed The 5000 in an utterly sustainable way is the perfect demonstration of that and we hope it will be a suitably impressive highlight for people coming to Culture Night on 16 September.

"Hats off to all the contributors and organisers, it's an amazing effort, and we can't wait to see the first fruits - or veg - of this epic project on Culture Night."