15 Fabric courses in Belfast

savvy & shine professional haircare

Savvy & Shine Professional Haircare was lovingly established in 2010 by founders Joanna and Tom Maxwell. Husband and wife team who realised an opportunity in the market for personable, cruelty free and sustainable haircare distribution across the UK and Ireland. An expert in her field, Joanna has over 25years experience in the industry educating salons in all things technical across the world. It led her to want to bring the very best in eco friendly, sustainable brands to like minded salon owners across the nation. Situated in Antrim, Northern Ireland the Savvy warehouse is a treasure trove of great haircare, education and everything a salon needs to make life a little easier.

anatomy trains uk

Tom says: “I developed the Anatomy Trains during the 1990’s, as a game for students to play when I was teaching Fascial Anatomy at the Rolf Institute. I was inspired by Ida Rolf, and have been practicing the deep fascial work I learned from her since 1976. “But when I came to try to teach, all the books you can find put forward the ‘single-muscle’ theory. Ida Rolf kept saying, “It’s all connected through the fascia.” Other than invoking the image of a grapefruit or a loofah, how do you make this real? How do you get ‘actionable intelligence’ on the functioning of the whole musculoskeletal system? “Just as an exercise to cement the students’ knowledge, I began stringing the muscles together through the fascia. This idea was initiated when Dr Jim Oschman gave me an article by Raymond Dart (the anthropologist and Alexander Technique student) linking the muscle in the trunk in a double-spiral arrangement (which shows up here as part of the Spiral Line). “My reaction was, “Why stop there?” From this base, I expanded Dart’s idea to the whole body, to help students see connections by stringing muscles together. The ‘rules’ are that the connections have to follow the grain in the fascial fabric in more or less a straight line, without breaks or changing levels.

imagine! belfast festival of ideas & politics

The 8th Imagine! Belfast Festival proved to be a successful offering involving 147 events and 359 speakers & performers during 21-27 March 2022. The eclectic week of talks, workshops, theatre, poetry, comedy, music, exhibitions, film and tours attracted an audience of 9,210 online and in-person attendees. Most of the events (82%) were free as the festival returned to live events after two years operating online. Although Covid continued to impact on our programme with 17 events cancelled due to illness, we were still able to roll out a huge range of events including headliners such as Michael Ignatieff, Tom Robinson, Helen Thompson, Michael Longley, Ece Temelkuran, Bill Neely and a host of exciting arts and cultural events – with many sold out or oversubscribed. We have conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the festival through an audience survey(3.5% sample). Our survey found that 95% of respondents felt the festival satisfied their expectations. It was particularly pleasing to find that 60% of audience members were attending a festival event for the first time and 37% of the sample had never been to a festival venue before, which suggests that we were able to reach new audiences and introduce them to new venues and partners. Other outcomes included: 12% of attendees came from outside Northern Ireland. Of these, 13% stated the festival was the main reason they were visiting Belfast. Audience spend: Our sample spent an average of £35 attending our events Number of festival partners: 52 Number of international participants: 40 with 27 events organised by participants from outside UK & Ireland Number of free events: 121 – 82% of total events Average ticket price: £7.8 Number of workshops: 14 Number of venues used: 35 Media coverage: Total number of items: 98. Reach: 4,022,796. AVE: £181,881. PR value: £545,644 Positive feedback was also elicited from survey respondents, detailed as follows: 95% of respondents felt the festival satisfied their expectations with only 1% reporting dissatisfaction (increased from 94% in 2021) 95.3% of people answered the question ‘after attending the festival, would you be more likely to attend other politics-related events’ (88% last year) 97.8 of respondents stated they were more likely to recommend the festival to family and friends after attending one of our events with 1.6% stating they felt the same When asked whether the festival promotes Belfast and Northern Ireland in a positive way, 98.4% said yes, with 1.6% responding as ‘don’t know’ People appeared to be reasonably well informed about the festival. 92% of the sample stated they were either well or somewhat informed about the festival prior to attending an event Respondents overwhelmingly found the subject matter of the event/performance as the main reason for attending the festival. However, familiarity with the speaker/performer was also cited as a factor. We also asked whether respondents considered themselves to be disadvantaged and found that 21% of the sample considered themselves to fall into this category which suggests were able to significantly engage with vulnerable and less well-off sections of the community. We invited the public to suggest and organise events in November 2021 and received a record 98 proposals, most of which we were able to support. This was a higher than expected level of public participation in the festival which resulted in more events than planned taking place in the 2022 programme. We also had a greater variety of events with more place-making events, exhibitions, music and discussions/workshop events compared to previous years.

queen's university belfast