Anthony lands newarts role in Belfast

This is a crucial step forward as the Partnership seeks to deliver and support arts development across the east of the city, with support from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council.

Anthony has over ten years’ experience of arts management, based at Flowerfield Arts Centre in Portstewart, where his responsibilities included programming of the annual arts festival, organising the centre’s year-round concert programme, re-development of the schedule of creative classes, management of the centre’s marketing activities and technical responsibility for events.

In addition, he has almost twenty years’ experience in journalism, working as a reporter for a number of local weekly titles in Northern Ireland, including The Coleraine Times where he was one of the founding team members in 1990.

Anthony is also active as a singer songwriter, having released six critically-acclaimed albums of original material.

His song ‘Sailortown’ remains one of Northern Ireland radio’s most requested songs and he has toured extensively, performing on a number of occasions in Nashville, New York and at Austin’s South by South West festival, as well as making concert appearances in Canada. His album Sing Under the Bridges was shortlisted for the inaugural Northern Ireland Music Prize in 2013.

In addition, he has published a number of pieces of short fiction and has written scripts and music for several theatre productions.

Anthony and his wife, writer and theatre director Andrea Montgomery, who is Artistic Director of Terra Nova Productions, live in East Belfast.

They are both passionate about the ongoing development of the area and the key role of arts in its regeneration.