A Rathcoole youth group has announced they will be bringing back the beats to Newtownabbey with a two-day music festival this summer.
Newtownabbey Arts and Cultural Network (NACN) is a community arts group that aims to develop the capacity of young people in the wider Rathcoole area to engage in innovative workshops and projects that will support them to become self-sustainable for the future.
After the success of VFest36 in 2019, Dee Crooks and the young people at NACN are coming back bigger and better for VFest22 with a two-day event that will bring big names such as Ian Van Dahl to the local people.
Project Manager Dee told Belfast Live that he is delighted to have the opportunity to grow off the success of their previous concert and allow his members to show their passion for the arts on a bigger stage.
Dee said: "In 2019, we did a pilot where we held an outdoor music festival for teenagers with no alcohol but really it was to see if this area would support something like this - in Belfast you've got Belsonic and Custom House Square happening in the city but there is nothing happening in this area.
"We decided to train our young people in event management skills and get them involved. The first one was very successful so I decided to apply again to hold one this year and off the success of 2019, Antrim and Newtownabbey Council are supporting our community approach to run events like these."
NANC is currently putting 15 young people through their Level 3 in Event Management who will be instrumental in running VFest22 and are also helping local people through their AIS Security Badge to involve as many local people as possible in the project.
"Some of our young leaders are now in their 20s and have been with us for many years and they are into the club scene themselves and they are now the young people who are overseeing what is needed in an area like this.
"A number of them are already talking about following this as a career and there is no reason why at NACN that we can't develop this into a sustainable route of employment for these young people," Dee explained.
Running on June 24 and 25, VFest22 will take place in V36 Park and will be one of the group's social enterprise ventures.
Dee continued: "Whenever I was younger, the rave and dance scene in Northern Ireland was one of the only things that brought people together from the two divided communities and one of the DJs who would have played was Pablo Gargano. He brought both sides together through music and that's who we are bringing back.
"The concert is in a shared space and we think it would be great to have him come back and play an old set of music that he would have played back in the day.
"We are also bringing a lot of local DJs from all over - DJs from the Protestant community, DJs from the Catholic community so they can play together on the Friday night."
The Friday night event 'Schools out for Summer' will be a non-alcohol concert and will give young people in the area a dedicated show where can feel there is something specific to celebrate them with big names such as Ian Van Dahl and Death Punch.
Day Two, 'The Main Event' will be an 18 event featuring Pablo Gargano, Ryen, Matt Davies and more.
Dee says is the group "stepping up the mark" from their first event and pushing to show the talent of the NANC youth team that they can pull off a major music event.
"It is also great for the economy here in the area because bringing these international artists to a local community that has never had this before and we get to use this shared space as a shared space because we feel music brings people together no matter where you are from," he added.
"Our vision for six or seven years time is to bring the likes of Lewis Capaldi and the people that are new on the scene at the time to our venue and bring 15,000 people to our park and the Newtownabbey area."
For more information on VFest22, see here.
