Other Voices Derry

St Columb’s Hall - one of the city’s oldest and most beloved venues - will open its doors for a weekend of intimate filmed performances, presented by MayKay!

Visceral Dublin four-piece Bleech 9:3, Glastonbury Emerging Talent winners Westside Cowboy, generational talent Muireann Bradley are all bound for the North West for next month’s Other Voices Derry! And making her long awaited Other Voices debut, BRIT Award-winning singer, songwriter, actor and activist Kate Nash will bring her distinctive blend of indie-pop, wit and storytelling to St Columb’s Hall as Other Voices’ 25th anniversary celebrations open in Derry.

As always, tickets for these filmed performances aren't for sale. Every Music Trail wristband holder is automatically entered into a draw for a Golden Ticket and the official ticket lottery for St Columb's Hall will open for entries at 12pm on Friday 11 September.

And if you can't be with us in person you'll be able to watch all of these incredible performances from wherever you are in the world via the OV YouTube!

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Join the waitlist!

Soundings, the ideas and discussion strand of Other Voices Derry, is a cultural forum that brings together artists, writers, makers, thinkers, civil society leaders and others to explore some of the defining questions of our time through the lenses of culture, community, and civic imagination.

From storytelling and music to power and representation, grassroots organising and global change, Soundings considers how we understand ourselves, one another and the places we call home, exploring the ideas, people and places imagining more hopeful futures.

This is the first edition of Soundings in Derry, taking place at The Playhouse on Saturday 26 September.

The Soundings registration is now sold out. As there is limited capacity, we encourage you to get down early to secure your spot. Those who have pre-registered will have priority.

You can check out the full schedule for this year's Soundings below:

All times are subject to change.

12:00 PM | Doors Open/Welcome

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12:30 PM | The Spaces That Make Us

The gig venue, the youth club, the dancefloor. For generations of young people in Derry and beyond, these were the places where it all happened, essential third spaces to meet, to showcase talent, to bridge divides, and to just be. The rooms where subcultures are born, where unlikely friendships form, and where a city's young people come to find themselves and each other.

As these spaces disappear, lost to rising costs, changing priorities or institutional neglect, we ask what it is that we stand to lose, and whether the DIY spirit that conjured them in the first place might yet inspire a new generation to build them anew.

With Claire Hall, Oh Yeah Music Centre, Belfast; Gareth Stewart, Other Voices/Music City Derry Music Producer & Promoter and co-founder of Celtronic; and Emma Warren, music journalist and author of Up The Youth Club: A Love Letter. Hosted by Cóilí Collins.

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1:30 PM | A Place of Our Own Imagining

Stories have always helped us make sense of who we are, where we come from, and the places we have not yet been. They carry us across boundaries of geography, experience and imagination, inviting us into lives beyond our own. They inform our understanding of place, challenge inherited narratives, preserve memory, and open up new ways of seeing ourselves and one another. Stories are inseparable from the places and communities from which they emerge. They are born of history, circumstance and imagination, reflecting both the possibilities and the challenges of the worlds they inhabit.

Bringing together writer and filmmaker Myrid Carten, screenwriter and author Ailbhe Keogan and writer and essayist Darran Anderson, in conversation with Séamas O'Reilly, this discussion explores the relationship between storytelling, identity and place. From the places we leave to those we return to, from memory and belonging to imagination and reinvention, the conversation considers how artists reflect the worlds they inherit, and, in turn, help imagine new ones.

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2:40 PM | Derry: A Border City Facing the Future in a Reshaped Europe

When Other Voices last came to Derry in 2013 and 2014, the city was tingling with possibility and energy. The Peace Bridge was newly opened, the city had celebrated its year as the UK's 2013 City of Culture, the UK was still in the EU, and Irish-British relations were, quietly, in good shape.

Twelve years on, we return to take stock. Much of that feeling of optimism seems harder to locate now. Political paralysis, a shrinking arts ecology, and the aftermath of Brexit make their mark on a city that was promised so much. It feels like that Derry instinct to say "wise up and just get on with it" is becoming harder to find. Yet Derry's defiant and creative spirit and voice remain undimmed, and the questions it poses about identity, belonging, and possibility are as alive as they have ever been.

Joining us is Tony Connelly, RTÉ's Europe Editor, to map where Derry sits today within the region, on this island, and within a Europe and a global order that are fundamentally reshaped since we were last here. What does this changing landscape mean for this border city in a post-Brexit landscape, and what might it offer communities still brimming with potential and asking what Derry might yet become?

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3:40 PM | ‘A Change in the Tarmac’ by Caolán Austin

Caolán Austin’s piece, 'A Change In The Tarmac', is an invitation to the listener to reflect on the 105-year history of the border in Ireland. Against the backdrop of electronica, ambient & contemporary-classical music, Caolán weaves together fragments of found sound, interviews & archive recordings. The result is an unfolding of memories and personal interactions that draw the listener closer to the smaller, more unspoken aspects of border life; highlighting the profound impact a border has on its surrounding communities.

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4:10 PM | In Conversation with Kate Nash

BRIT Award-winning singer, songwriter, actor and activist Kate Nash has never shied from speaking her mind, using her platform for causes from independent artists' rights to trans allyship. Now, that same instinct has turned toward her own Irish heritage, weaving it into her music and bringing a history rarely spoken about in the UK into public view.

At Soundings, she sits down with arts journalist, filmmaker and disability rights activist Louise Bruton to talk activism, identity and the stories we choose to tell.

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Beyond St Columb's Hall, the Music Trail will take over some of Derry's best loved venues for a weekend of live music. Dozens of shows, all wrapped into one weekend, bringing together familiar Other Voices names alongside the artists we think you'll be talking about next year.

We're over the moon to reveal a brand new wave of artists set to perform as part of this year’s Music Trail across Derry on 25 and 26 September, with almost fifty live performances taking place across venues throughout the city.

Making their Other Voices Derry debuts this September are Belfast-based industrial post-punk and electronic duo CHALK, who released their boundary-pushing new record earlier this year; enigmatic Irish indie breakout THEATRE; Dublin rap hero Curtisy, Derry’s own storyteller Declan McLaughlin; Belfast indie-jazz-funk five-piece Esmeralda Road; and Donegal’s Gabriel Paschal Blake, best known for his work with The Murder Capital will present a special solo showcase of new material.

Also joining the lineup are alt neo-soul duo Negro Impacto; Derry dreampop group Our Krypton Son,  London-based collective Salmon Cat, associated with the NiNE8 and counting Biig Piig as a member: indie songwriter and storyteller Seán Joyce; garage punks Search Results, Dublin DIY collective SELL EVERYTHING; DJ, producer and multidisciplinary artist Shampain, whose work sits within Ireland’s alternative electronic and club culture; Galway garage trio Shark School; Belfast-born newcomer State of Grace; an audio visual show by The Celluloid Escape, and Derry-based electronic music and visual artist The Fully Automatic Model.

They join the first wave of acts announced for this year’s Other Voices Derry Music Trail, alongside Kate Nash, Brògeal, Bleech 9:3 and Westside Cowboy, completing a lineup that spans indie, post-punk, electronic, folk, hip-hop, jazz and more.

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Weekend Music Trail wristbands are on sale now via Eventbrite, priced at £60 plus booking fees. Wristbands provide access to every Music Trail show across the weekend, on a first-come, first-served basis and automatically enter holders into the draw for tickets to the filmed performances taking place at St Columb’s Hall.

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Other Voices Derry Presents: Martin Hayes & Brian Donnellan.

Traditional music heroes Martin Hayes & Brian Donnellan will come together for a very special collaborative performance in The Guildhall Derry to officially kick off the weekend’s happenings. Taking place on Thursday 24 September, tickets for this special opening concert are available now via Eventbrite at £25 + booking fee.

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Praised by the Irish Times as a musician with an “insatiable appetite for adventure,” Martin Hayes is one of Irish traditional music’s most significant talents. Rooted in his native East Clare, he continues to shape the music’s future through projects including The Gloaming, The Common Ground Ensemble and the Martin Hayes Quartet. He is artistic director of Cork’s Masters of Tradition festival and co-curator of the Marble Sessions at Kilkenny Arts Festival.
He shares the Guildhall stage with Brian Donnellan, a concertina and bouzouki player from Co. Clare, whose playing creates a deeply nuanced dialogue with Hayes - music shaped by awareness, breath and an oral tradition that is both rooted and contemporary.

Tickets priced £25 + booking fee are available here