The Phoenix of Belfast

Part of a project Seedhead Arts led on in 2014 where they managed to persuade city planners not to put up fake shop fronts but invest in street art instead, Bristolian artist Andy Council came over to paint the facade of the North Street Arcade. This beautiful art deco Arcade was destroyed in an arson attack in 2004 and has lain derelict ever since. Andy’s piece speaks of both the fire but how important Belfast’s built heritage is to our re-emergence as a modern post conflict city. In 2016 a small piece of the facade came loose and fell onto the footpath and the current owners then took it upon themselves to remove the rest of the facade for ‘health and safety’ reasons. Although the portions of the mural are still visible it’s in pretty bad shape so we’ve included a picture of how it used to look here...