LCCC Residents' Magazine : Winter 2024

ISLAND Arts Centre all set to host its Summer Arts Festival

Once again our ISLAND Arts Centre looks forward to welcoming children and young people (aged 4 to 16) to its Summer Arts Festival from 29 July to 16 August.


We are delighted to once again embrace the opportunity to celebrate Sam McBratney’s worldwide best-selling picture book, ‘Guess How Much I Love You’ at this festival.  Our festival is the perfect homage to such a talented local writer and the perfect opportunity to inspire young people to practice some creativity.

Communities and Wellbeing Chairman, Councillor Thomas Beckett launches our Summer Arts Festival with the help of local young people.

The festival is dedicated to children and their natural curiosity –something we strive to focus on in all our activities along with helping to build their confidence and make new friends.  We believe it offers great opportunities to keep children and young people entertained during the summer months.

This year’s summer festival features:
three individual Arts Weeks 

  • family workshop experiences
  • one off workshops for teens working with the artist who created the spectacular spray art images from the book in Haslem’s Lane 
  • other unique activities
No two days are the same!


Activities will include: 

  • pottery
  • circus skills
  •  junk art
  • design
  • film
  • street art
  • illustration and much more!

Click here to view the flyer on our Summer Arts Festival as a PDF

Tickets are on sale now - please click here to book.

The Guess How Much I Love You book is close to our hearts as Sam was a local man.  It is a beautiful piece of children’s literature, complimented by the wonderful illustrations of the talented Anita Jeram.

Last year we were honoured to open the first public art trail in Northern Ireland dedicated to this book.  It saw Nutbrown Hare popping up all over Lisburn City Centre and has been great success with all ages. If you haven’t followed the trail yet then find out more on this link

And over Easter this year we held ‘Guess How Much I Love You - Paint Your Own Pottery Experiences - ‘All in a Glaze’ for children and families.  Thanks very much to everyone who took part.

You can view some of the finished products from these workshops below.  They are displayed in video format.