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Displaying items by tag: The Barge

#BelfastBarge Dublin Docklands has the M.V. Cill Airne, the floating restaurant and bar venue however are you aware of The Belfast Barge and its maritime museum, writes Jehan Ashmore.

The Lagan Legacy's Barge bears a precious cargo with the extraordinary story of Belfast's epic maritime and industrial past. This is told in a maritime exhibition called 'The Greatest Story Never Told.'

As for the barge itself, she cannot claim to be Belfast-built as the former Dutch cargo-barge M.V. Confiance was purchased and renamed in 2006 by Lagan Legacy.

Work to fully renovate the barge has also provided the floating venue to become a cultural hub on the river lagan, regenerating the area and encouraging citizenship as well as economic development.

The Barge also houses a café and multi-use performance space is permanently moored adjacent to Lanyon Place, which is located to the rear of Belfast's Waterfront Hall.

As for the cultural component, the barge performance space is Belfast's only floating theatre where a variety of events among them film screenings, album launches and comedy evenings are held. In addition the venue is available for event hire and family education programmes.

 

Published in Belfast Lough

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.