Open House Festival in partnership with Ards and North Down Borough Council have announced a very special show to close out the 2022 festival. Snow Patrol will play a special acoustic show on the seafront at Bangor.
The concert will take place on Wednesday 31 August 2022 at the McKee Clock Arena. The band are no stranger to playing huge gigs in Bangor, with their trilogy of Ward Park shows among the biggest in Northern Ireland. The event will run between 5pm and 10pm leaving plenty of time for the lucky attendees to make use of public transport home.
Tickets for the event will cost £22.50 and will go on sale at 10am on Friday 11 July. Support artists will be announced in due course. All profits from the event will be used to fund the re-development of the old Court House in Bangor into a non-profit music venue. A very worthy cause.
As well as fundraising for Open House, the event will celebrate the conferment of the freedom of the borough to Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody. The award recognises the outstanding contribution Gary has made to the local area as a musician of international standing, a philanthropist, and a champion of local charitable causes.
“Thank you to Ards and North Down Borough Council for this honour. I was born and grew up in the Borough, and though I may have wandered for a few years, I made my home back in Bangor again. Johnny, Nathan and myself are really looking forward to playing on Bangor seafront for the very first time. It’ll be great craic. This town, indeed newly minted city, has always been a part of me and always will be. I do still mourn Paul’s chippy on the seafront though,” said Gary Lightbody.
Kieran Gilmore, Director of Open House, said: “It will be an honour to host Snow Patrol acoustic on our seafront and help Gary Lightbody mark this rare and exceptional honour. The fact that the concert is taking place just opposite the Court House is particularly apt, as profits are in aid of our restoration of the building and will help to complete the final phase of the project before we open the doors later this year.”
“We held our first Open House event in Bangor ten years ago in the summer of 2012,” he continued, “and since then we have focused our efforts on creating a creative town – now a creative city, of course. Bangor may have a relatively small centre, but it is bursting with creativity and talent and Gary is at the pinnacle of that. Yes it still has its challenges, but there is so much hope on the horizon for our new city. We like to think big at Open House and are already considering how a future application for U.K. City of Culture would look. Gary and the Council share the same vision as us and that’s why they are supporting the Court House project.”
As well as the headline performance by Snow Patrol, the Open House Festival programme for 2022 is chock full of great events. In the beautiful surroundings of Bangor Castle’s Walled Garden, there will be sumptuous performances from Martha Wainwright, Beth Orton, Villagers, Willy Mason, Duke Special and many more. Aside from the ticketed events, Open House will also be running free gigs in Ward Park every Sunday afternoon throughout July and August.
You can view the full programme and buy tickets for Open House Festival 2022 via the Open House Festival website.
