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The 19th Annual Outburst Q***r Arts Festival 14-22 November 2025 The 16th Annual OUTBURST will take place 11-19 November 2022

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OUTBURST Q***R ARTS FESTIVAL is an annual explosion of q***r art and performance in Belfast, Northern Ireland/ the North/ here. We showcase great local and international q***r work and support the development of q***r arts at home and internationally. Email us at: [email protected]

09/06/2026

This image is 20 years old and was a flyer to advertise a meeting in 2006 to get more people involved in running the first Outburst in 2007, before we even had a name for it 😻
A big thank you to everyone who sent a submission for the festival this year. We are working our way through the proposals and hope to respond to you all by the end of June.
Some fun facts!
- We received 158 proposals this year, the highest number yet
- Proposals came from artists and producers in 31 different countries
- The lowest number of applications by art form was theatre, the highest was performance art, with comedy a close second.
- The place with the highest number of applications to arrive in the final hour before the deadline was…Belfast. (Well done, we hope your nerves have settled.)

06/06/2026

Tonight we had a sharing of what happens when five differently brilliant artists hang out together for two weeks and create something from all their conversations.
लुकामारी (Hide & Seek) is an interactive installation in a big tent, with video, photography, sound design and dance, that q***rs the normative timeline and experience of “childhood”. There are so many tender moments in it, from early-teen q***r first loves to intimate little stories that ask big questions. It’s so incredible to watch 5 people who usually work alone bond like a gang of 10 year olds who just met in a field on a sunny day and are best friends by sundown.
Massive thanks to Ellen, Yubraj, Jyoti, Srijana and Mila for throwing themselves into the challenge with so much heart and love, and to Kaalo101, Hunter and Safal for organising everything so amazingly.
😻

This Belfast/ Kathmandu artist collaboration was made possible through British Council’s Connections Through Culture programme. With extra special thanks to Yukta and Nhooja at who have been such committed supporters of q***r artists locally here in Nepal and of connections with Outburst.

05/06/2026

Outburst was delighted to meet yesterday with the cast and crew of Elephants in the Fog, the first Nepali film to win an award (Un Certain Regard) at Cannes Film Festival. This stunningly shot film mostly centres actors (+non-actors) from the Kinnar third gender community. 19 years ago, Nepal was one of the first countries in the world to legalise third gender on passports, though the situation for trans and third gender people remains very complex here in terms of accessing rights, with a deeply embedded caste system that brings many intersectional questions into the mix and reminds us that q***r rights are never separate from class, gender, racialisation and other social justice issues.
It was lovely to speak with lead actors Pushpa Thing Lama (second from left in photo) and Aliz Ghimire (right) who were saying how it was like a dream to have a 7 minute standing ovation at Cannes and how much it means for the community for the film to be seen.
We are very grateful to them for this beautiful piece of work. Outburst will continue to work with our friends worldwide to explore how we build a more equitable world through arts and storytelling.
See our stories for the trailer for Elephants in the Fog.

02/06/2026

Outburst is in Nepal for Kutsching, a Belfast / Kathmandu artist creative collaboration (now with bonus French artist!) in partnership with the incredible grassroots radical q***r & feminist art space, .101 . Who needs to be climbing Everest, when we have the dizzying heights of art, no oxygen masks needed (yet). Over the next week the artists involved in Kutsching, .wav and will be taking over our Insta to tell you more about their work and the magic we’ve been creating together.

ID: a video of Yubraj dancing towards a bright patch of sun through the clouds in the mountains. The second image is a a group photo of all the collaborators.

28/05/2026

You have just one and a bit days to submit your work for the 20th edition of Outburst Q***r Arts Festival, with the Open Call closing at 12 midday this Friday, May 29th!
If you have any final questions before you send in your application, today is the final day we’ll be able to get back to you.
Please read ALL of the application information on the website (link: https://outburstarts.com/festival/festival-submissions/) including the FAQs, which we have been adding to for clarity as your questions come up.

A massive thank you to all who have and who will submit work, you make the festival come to life and we can’t wait to have a look at everything over the next couple of weeks.

26/05/2026

Hey! Q***r Writers! The catflap is open!

catflap is Outburst’s acclaimed annual publication of smart new q***r writing with a disco heart and the open call for this year is now live!

catflap is a space for exciting q***r thinking, beyond the academic to where pop culture meets q***r ideas and feral tenderness. We publish essays that range from the polemic to the speculative and poetry that speaks on the page and the stage.
We love it when things are both/and.

We want q***r writing where q***r isn’t just an identity, but a crafty method, a sideways strategy, a h***y practice in writing and life. We’re here for your grand fury, your insistence on resistance, your venting, inventions, interventions and inversions.

Edited for a second year by writer So Mayer, the Open Call will close on JULY 13, so get writing!
Check out the full details for submissions on our website, link in bio.

catflap is made possible through support from Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

22/05/2026

😍New gang member introduction😍
Welcome to Outburst’s new Organisational Manager slash Cat Wrangler, Eve Murtagh.
Eve will mostly be managing the big glorious mess of things you don’t see, like our admin and getting us organised for venues and looking after artists and events.
Some of you will already know Eve through their previous role at Thrive, the research org for arts and culture here in Belfast, and more of you again will know her from her creative life as , singer songwriter (she is REALLY good, check their stuff out). We love having artists on the team and we’ve already rearranged the office 💪🏽

Big thanks to Paul Hamlyn Foundation for supporting Eve’s role through the Arts Fund.

ID: photo of Eve, who is a white person with short dark hair, with a blond streak in their fringe. She has blue eyes and is wearing orange eyeshadow. They have some silver nose and ear piercings and are wearing a lovely black and white jumper.

11/05/2026

⏱️This is your reminder that you have just a couple of weeks left to get your submissions in for the 20th Outburst Q***r Arts Festival (November 13-21).
The OPEN CALL ends at midday on Friday 29th May, check out the details of what you need to send on our website, link in bio.

***rArt

07/05/2026

LONDON! This evening at 7pm at - join us for Catflaps and Ciphers, a special event celebrating the the 5th edition of Catflap, Outburst’s print-only publication of new q***r writing. We’ll be sharing thoughts with catflap contributors author Juliet Jacques and Jack Thompson, publisher at Cipher Press and co-founder of the Hastings Q***r Book Festival, along with Ruth McCarthy from Outburst / Catflap and So Mayer, editor of Catflap issue 5, looking at why we need q***r and trans spaces, publications and events more than ever and why we have to keep them radical and work in solidarity nationally and internationally in the face of existential challenges. Come join the conversation!
The event will open with a reading by Keith Jarrett, to celebrate the publication of his incredible new poetry collection Hide Me Under the Blood and I Shall Be Satisfied from Bad Betty Press.

Tickets booking via or pay on the door for the last few seats!

catflap is published by Outburst Arts through support from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

03/05/2026

Kutsching! We’re heading to Kathmandu in Nepal later this month to work with our friends at .101 on a new collaboration at their beautiful new grassroots q***r/fem arts space 💪🏽 🔥 🖤 (Kutsching is a Nepali word for a kind of playful teasing and craic. )
We’ve been developing ideas and collaborating with artists for a few years now with Kaalo101, who do incredible radical q***r arts and activist work locally and regionally. This time we’re excited that Belfast artist /photographer Ellen Blair will travel to work with local q***r and trans artists in Kathmandu, as part of creating a q***r arts showcase with Kaalo in June. Many of you will know Ellen through her brilliant Homemade Undercuts exhibition at Outburst Q***r Arts Festival two years back, as well as being our official festival documentarian!
If you are a q***r artist in the region, check out the Open Call from Kaalo101 on their profile to get involved in the showcase with us.
We can’t wait to hang out with all the big cat guardians and deities.
😻🪷

Kutsching is made possible through the British Council’s Connections Through Culture programme.

ID: main image is a graphic collage of a smiling Outburst Kitty next to a grinning large cat guardian statue from Patan in Kathmandu.

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http://www.outburstarts.com/

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