Activity at The Crescent and Belfast Book Festival is a collaborative endeavour. Each year, we work with a pool of Freelancers who bring their expertise, ideas and range of perspectives to inform and shape our programme. For 2024/25, we are delighted to be working with: Music Associate - Donal Scullion; and Creative Learning Associates - Husk Bennett, Emma Cummins and Mags White.
Donal Scullion is a performer, songwriter and arranger working with a wide variety of acts over 20+ years. A solo acoustic performer of original music, band leader and songwriter for 10-piece original soul machine NI Soul Troop, member of 8-piece original reggae outfit The Vibes, and guitarist and vocalist in The Unholy Gospel Band. As an arranger and session musician worked with many great local acts including Cormac Neeson, Malojian, Ciara O’Neil, Owen Lamont and many others. This eclectic background has led to performances at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Ulster Hall, festivals, theatres, pubs and clubs all over UK and Ireland, support slots with a wide variety of artists including Lee “Scratch” Perry, The Specials, The Brand New Heavies, Craig Charles, Damien Dempsey, The Answer and And So I Watch You From Afar. Click here to read more about Donal.
Husk Bennett is a visual artist from Belfast, with a BA(Hons) in Fine Art & Art History from Manchester School of Art. His work focuses on media, ultra-modernity and shifting, contemporary outputs of labour. Husk has exhibited extensively across the UK and Ireland including The Gallery S1 with Artichoke Trust, Short Supply’s Queer Contemporaries in AIR Gallery, Manchester, URGENCIES (2023) in CCA, Derry, Catalyst Arts’ FIX 21, Belfast and recently had his first solo show with Flax Arts in their Threshold space; entitled ‘THR(E/A)SH’. Alongside this, he took part in The MAC’s Hatch & Scratch scheme from 2021-22. Husk is a current Co-Director of Catalyst Arts (2022-24) and he is a founding member of The Glue Factory, a collective of 7 emerging artists from across Ireland. In 2023 Husk worked collaboratively with Array Collective, GUDSKUL and in October 2023 was commissioned to create a video provocation for a-n Assembly Belfast: Who Cares? In 2024 Husk undertook a residency from February - March with COVEN, Berlin in collaboration with the University of Atypical and Flax Arts Studios. Husk was a recipient of funding from Belfast City Council in 2022 and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 2023/24.
Emma Cummins is a writer, copywriter and arts professional, specialising in books and creative learning. Her writing has been published in the Quietus, the Guardian, Open Democracy, Flash Art International, Circa and Aesthetica Magazine. She was shortlisted for the Fish Short Memoir Prize for her piece about the 1998 Banbridge bomb. Since completing a Masters degree at Goldsmiths, University of London, Emma has worked for Guardian businesses for over a decade – from coordinating the Guardian Masterclasses learning programme to managing the Guardian Bookshop and working as a freelance copywriter. Emma writes fiction, and has read her work at events with the Seamus Heaney Centre and John Hewitt International Summer School. She is passionate about writing and reading, with a particular interest in Irish fiction, short stories and journalism. Emma is from Hillsborough, Co. Down, and lives in South Belfast.
Mags White has been working in the Arts Sector for over 20 years and is currently a Freelance Fundraiser and Event Manager operating as Grapefruit Moon, a Board Member for Show Some Love, and Part Time Development Manager at Belfast International Arts Festival. She's a mum to teenagers, sings in two bands, paints teapots and occasionally gets a chance to jump in the sea. Her future plans include becoming the next Stevie Nicks and finally getting that second tattoo.
The Belfast Book Festival 2024 Associates are: Neil Hegarty and Mícheál McCann. Click here to find out more about Festival 2024 associates.
