Festivals as a tool to integrate cultural identities in the city of Belfast

During the past few decades Belfast has witnessed a growing interest in festivals celebrating local cultural and historical traditions. In order to understand the context of festival development in Belfast an understanding of the city's history is essential. Belfast has around half a million inhabitants of two ethnic backgrounds, Irish nationalist (predominately Catholic) and British Unionist (predominately Protestant) (Russell 2005). Ethnicity in Northern Ireland mainly refers to the Catholic and Protestant populations. The people of Northern Ireland are predominantly white, with only o.8s per cent of them having non-Irish backgrounds. This percentage increases slightly to 1.3 per cent in Belfast, with 29 per cent of these being of Chinese origins.