After our debut appearance with Other Voices in Dingle last month, it’s time for the Banter Salon’s second outing with the festival and TV show as they head to Derry next month for the UK City of Culture 2013 celebrations.
On this occasion, the Banter Salon will be located at The Cottage in The Craft Village on Shipquay Street on Saturday and Sunday February 9 and 10. Doors open both days at 3.45pm-ish and we’ll kick off at 4pm. Admission is free, but capacity is limited so get there early.
The Banter Salon at Other Voices in Derry will feature a wide variety of discussions and conversations over the weekend including:
– The Guardian’s music editor Caspar Llewelyn Smith on what comes next for the music business in the wake of HMV’s woes, Universal’s expansionist tendencies, the growth of streaming services and other flotsam and jetsam
– Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, the Financial Times’ pop critic, on Psy, “Gangham Style” and why pop from the east rather than the west may be the future
– Derry Now: a number of Derry artists, culture practitioners and interested parties discuss the city’s current cultural and artistic health and highlights, what the UK City of Culture designation means for the city’s art practitioners and an attempt to identify what’s next for the city. This panel will include Maolíosa Boyle (Turner Prize curator, Void gallery, Lumiere’s Brilliant), Joe Carlin (director of Foyle Pride) and Abby Oliveira (spoken-word poet and artist who has worked extensively with the various communities of Derry).
– John Naughton, The Observer’s technology columnist and Open University professor of the public understanding of technology, on technology and identity
– Bringing it all back home: local hero Bronagh Gallagher on her music and her home city.
– Ed Vulliamy from The Observer on Amexica and the fraught war between drug cartels carried out on the wild frontier that is the Mexico-American border.
– Mary Fitzgerald, Irish Times’ foreign affairs correspondant, on what is currently happening in Mali and Algeria, the post-Arab Spring world and how seismic changes in Egypt and Libya amay play out in the long term.
Ed and Mary will also discuss the role of the war correspondant and other issues in the modern media.
– Derry Tech: a look at Derry’s brave new tech world and especially CultureTECH 2013 with Mark Nagurski (director of CultureTECH) and Emer Grant (Void Gallery).
There will also be performances over the weekend from Jesca Hoop, Rosie Carney, Ryan Vail and George Ezra.
Ahead of the Banter Salon, Banter producer Jim Carroll will also be chairing the first of this year’s Civic Conversations in the city at the Void Gallery on Thursday February 7 at 7.30pm. The Civic Conversation will be a series of open forum discussions designed to involve and engage the local Derry/Londonderry community during the City Of Culture year. Guests will come together to discuss all aspects of the City of Culture – cultural, political, economic and social.
Joining Jim will be Declan Sheehan, Project Curator at BT Portrait of a City for City of Culture 2013 and independent curator for various projects including Void, Artlink Fort Dunree Residencies, Tulca and others; Anne Crilly, filmmaker, arts lobbyist and Media Lecturer at the University of Ulster; and Mhairi Sutherland, a visual artist who has recently completed a practice based PhD in Dublin on conflict, landscape and photography and is currently involved with a cultural project in the Verbal Arts Centre, Derry, which addresses the issues around the transition of the RUC to the PSNI as a result of the Good Friday Agreement.