Brilliant Belfast

I spent three days last week over in Belfast at the joint conference of the Library Association of Ireland and CILIP Ireland. I have uploaded some pictures here. Rhona was there with me and I think it is fair to say that we had a brilliant time. We flew over on Wednesday afternoon to the City Airport which is ten minutes from the city centre and allowed for a hassle-free journey. The conference was being held at the Merchant Hotel which is located in the Cathedral Quarter. This five-star hotel is sumptuous. It used to be the Ulster Bank and the front part is opulent Victorian with a new extension to the rear which is themed art deco. From my room (enormous and with the most extravagant bathroom you've ever seen) I had an lovely view over to St Anne's Cathedral with its modern stainless steel spire, added recently to mark the success of the peace process and which Rhona and I visited quickly first thing on Friday morning.


We had time that first evening to go for a walk around the centre of Belfast. We visited the new Titanic Memorial Garden at the side of City Hall. It is beautifully done, subtle, understated and very poignant with the names of all the victims. We then walked down to the Waterfront Hall, a beautiful round building (something I love). The modern architectural additions to Belfast are, I must say, fantastic and give the city a really modern feel; they do, however, sit very comfortably with some of the equally stunning Victorian and Georgian buildings. Rhona and I were both struck by the use of glass in many of these buildings. It is almost as if architects, designers and those commissioning buildings are saying "we'll use glass now because we can" without any fear of windows being blown out. We then had dinner at a lovely restaurant called Nick's Warehouse and very delicious it was too.

The conference began on Thursday morning with CILIP President, Phil Bradley, talking about social media and how we must embrace it or become irrelevant. Phil made some really interesting observations, not least about where Google goes from here given that the success of Google (as a search engine) means that people leave it as a site as soon as they've got what they were looking for. My presentation wa in the afternoon and it was about professional education. I'd a packed house and a really engaged audience and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

In the evening, we went out to Stormont for a ministerial reception hosted by Carál Ní Chuilín, MLA, the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure. Also present was Fergus O'Dowd, TD, the Minister of State for the New Era, from the Republic. Stormont is absolutely stunning; the setting, the landscaped grounds and the sheer impressiveness of the building itself. Afterwards it was back to the hotel for a wonderful conference dinner.

The following day there were some fascinating presentations including ones from Margaret Hayes, City Librarian in Dublin on that city's status as an UNESCO city of literature and Nicky Parker, Head of Transformation at Manchester City Council on their recent library developments.

Rhona and I managed to fit in a whistle-stop tour round the new Titanic Centre which is, again, a fantastic piece of architecture and a really, really impressive heritage centre with splendid use of technology throughout. If you get the chance folks, go!

LAI/CILIP Ireland's conference was super and we were made to feel very welcome. Thank you to Fionnuala Hanrahan, Adrienne Adair and Anne Peoples for everything. Loved the conference, loved Belfast, loved the hotel!