Belfast’s Culture Night: How a City Weaponised Free Theatre to Sell Peace (and Google Office Space)
BELFAST—While half the planet doom-scrolls through fresh footage of wildfires, coups, and AI-generated pop ballads, roughly 100,000 people in Northern Ireland’s capital spent a recent Friday night doing something almost subversive: walking, talking, queuing for theatre tickets, and politely applauding Ukrainian polka-techno fusion. Culture Night Belfast, now in its 14th year, is marketed as an…