37 Educators providing Leadership courses in Belfast

national deaf children's society training

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.

northern regional college

Northern Regional College are seeking to recruit highly skilled and enthusiastic staff to inspire, support and encourage our students and help them to achieve their academic and career goals and aspirations. The College recognises its employees as a valuable resource and strives to be an outstanding organisation. We acknowledge outstanding contribution of staff to our College mission through our annual staff awards.

sport northern ireland

Sport Northern Ireland is the leading public body for the development of sport in Northern Ireland. We distribute funds on behalf of the Exchequer and on behalf of The National Lottery. Our vision is: Northern Ireland: renowned as a place where people enjoy, engage and excel in sport Our mission is: To lead sports development at all levels producing more participants and more winners Our Strategic Objectives are: Sporting Communities: To increase and support the number of people adopting and sustaining a sporting lifestyle Sporting Clubs: To enable more people to reach their sporting goals through a structured environment Sporting Winners: To help more Northern Ireland Athletes to win at the highest level Sport Northern Ireland remains clear that the values and cultures of an organisation drives its commitment to excellence and our values and principles set out our commitment to providing people in Northern Ireland with world class sporting experiences. In consultation with our partners and staff, we have developed a Values and Principles Framework that will guide how we work to achieve our Corporate Vision, Mission and Strategic Objectives: Leadership: Being strategic and using our resources and expertise to achieve the maximum impact Creativity: Pushing boundaries and being flexible and innovative in our approach Teamwork: Ensuring genuine collaboration and partnerships and embracing the contribution of others Excellence: Providing an outstanding service for all Integrity: Being accountable, transparent, honest and fair Sport Northern Ireland is based at the House of Sport in Belfast, and operates a National Outdoor Training Centre at the base of the Mourne Mountains – Tollymore National Outdoor Centre. Sport Northern Ireland also manage the Sport Northern Ireland’s Sports Institute (SNISI),which is the High Performance Arm of Sport Northern Ireland based at the Jordanstown campus of the University of Ulster. SINI prepares Northern Ireland’s best athletes to perform on the world stage by providing an environment that nurtures elite athletes and coaches.

politics in action

We are delighted to welcome our new Executive Director Paul Smyth, who comes to us with a wealth of experience and a strong reputation for ground breaking youth work. I am thrilled to have taken up the post of Executive Director with Politics in Action – and I want to start by congratulating my predecessor Patricia O’Lynn on her election to the Northern Ireland Assembly. We live in a turbulent time for politics around the world, nationally and locally – and this makes the work of supporting young people’s role as active citizens more challenging and even more important. We are emerging from a global pandemic which has put unprecedented restrictions on the lives and freedoms of young people, and which has impacted their learning, their social lives, their relationships and for some their mental health. Politics in Action responded proactively to these challenges by moving workshops online and ensuring continuity. I am optimisticwe can return to largely face-to-face delivery of our programmes with young people in schools and other settings, and can find new ways of engaging with more young people and in particular those who are not normally invited into conversations about politics and citizenship. Much of what we already do is in collaboration with schools and with other youth organisations. I see so much potential for additional collaborations that allow our little charity to punch above its weight. One of the many attractions of the role is the excellent Board of Trustees who provide strong governance, leadership and vision for Politics in Action. They bring significant social and political capital to the charity and use it in the interests of young people and our shared future. I would love to hear your ideas about how Politics in Action should direct our energies over the coming months and years. Feel free to drop me a line and I am always up for a coffee and a creative chat!

generation women

I spent the first half of my career in a thick fog, and of course I got lost and ended up somewhere I didn’t want to be. I felt lost, miserable, and what little confidence I had was waning by the minute. I also became a total bore. I was consumed by how unhappy I was. I couldn’t even apply for another job because I didn’t know what I’d do. So I felt stuck. I had, by many measures, a great job, a great salary, in a great company. But I was in the wrong place. I was ambitious with nowhere to direct it, so it evolved into frustration! It took a fair bit of effort to turn it around, which started with working out what I wanted and developing some much needed confidence to get there. Thankfully I had a good basis with my Psychology degree, throw in a mountain of self-help books, a coaching and NLP qualification, a mountain of training on presenting and the like…and a real desire to build my brand, visbility, and expertise, meant I built a reputation for business and leadership transformation. That experience of having a big impact, being recognised, and having real influence made me feel like I could achieve anything. My values, purpose, and strengths were all aligned and I felt amazing! It came as quite a shock then to be confronted by my inner feminist one day. I’d had my first daughter (I now have 2), and was having a cheeky nap. You know how it is, I love my sleep! So for the first time ever, I sat her down in front of Nickelodeon so I could get some zzz’s. I was happily snoozing away when the advertising started to filter through to me. The ‘boys toys’ were all exciting and adventurous. The ‘girls toys’ made me want to vomit. All about being pretty and vacuous. I jumped off the sofa with an ‘oh hell no’! Ever since I was a little girl I’ve been driven by fairness. I think it may be because I’m the youngest of 4 and nothing ever seemed fair from my standpoint. My sister tells me of times I used to fight for gay rights at the dinner table and I was always arguing for what I felt was right (because it is). The one thing I’d never have called myself back then, or until that day, was a feminist. No, I’d been well trained by society to see feminists as embarrassing, hairy, dungaree-wearing angry women who made a show of themselves. This moment set a chain of events into action that lead me to start a political party where I live, and gave me the direction for the business I would later start.

queen's university belfast