Mull It Over 049: Culture Vultures

Belfast's Culture Night is back after a six year hiatus. Here are the coolest Mull It Over musical highlights happening across the city this Friday.

Sep 17, 2025

Welcome to the first ever EMIO - Emergency Mull It Over for those of you uninitiated. To paraphrase the really sound lad over in America - it’s “an old‑fashioned term that we use: ~~groceries~~ EMIO. I used it on the campaign. It’s such an old‑fashioned term but a beautiful term: ~~groceries~~ EMIO. So, it’s a bag with a lot of different things in it. ~~Groceries~~ EMIO went through the roof, and I campaigned on that. I talked about the word ‘~~groceries~~’ ‘EMIO’ for a lot of time.”

Culture Night Belfast is back, baby. After a six year hiatus (notwithstanding some scaled down events in between due to the pandemic and other factors) it returns this Friday, 19th September in all its vibrant, vivacious glory. And although it is truly back, with over 100 free events, happenings, workshops, performances and exhibitions taking place all over the city in seven different locations, there has been some considered refining done to help reimagine CNB for a new era. If you frequented Culture Night pre-2020, like me, you will have been all too aware of its not-so-secret reputation for turning into, well, a street drinking piss-up. I know what you’re thinking - ‘sure that is our culture!’, and while you may be right, moves have been made this year to curb the anti-social aspect of the event and to rebrand it as a fully artist-led and venue-driven venture. Really, that’s what it always should and could have been.

Since the pandemic, over 100 music venues have been lost across the island of Ireland and paired with the astronomical economic mountain independent artists must now climb just to put on a local show, never mind a regional tour, the landscape for artists and venues alike, is bleak. I listened to one unnamed local band explain recently how a respected Belfast gig venue wanted to host them for a show, albeit with the caveat that the venue take a cut of merchandise sales on the night. That made me uneasy.

So, along comes Culture Night 2025. Artist-led, and venue-driven. It won’t save the live events industry, but it is a welcome return and certainly a step in the right direction, after a barren six years. So then, on to the fun stuff: here are the coolest Mull It Over musical picks for Culture Night Belfast 2025 -