EASTSIDE ARTS FESTIVAL - CONTEMPORARY ARTS & MUSIC IN EAST BELFAST
EastSide Arts Festival is one of Belfast’s flagship cultural celebrations - a festival that promotes creativity, connection, and community. Each summer, the festival brings together people from every part of the city and beyond, uniting audiences through music, theatre, literature, and visual art. What began as a local celebration has grown into a symbol of cultural progress and shared identity for East Belfast and the wider region.
For the past three years, FrontLeft has led the festival’s digital transformation - combining social media management, digital consultancy, and paid advertising to grow visibility, increase ticket sales, and build deeper collaboration between organisers, artists, and venues. Our focus has been to respect the festival’s legacy while guiding it toward a more contemporary and cohesive digital identity - one that reflects both its deep community roots and its ambition to connect with new, diverse audiences across Northern Ireland and beyond.
“The result was a series of sold out events at one of the world’s leading venues.”
THE PROJECT
The challenge for EastSide Arts Festival lies in uniting a wide-ranging programme and an equally varied audience under one cohesive digital identity. The festival’s schedule spans music, comedy, theatre, visual art, and literature - each with unique tones, creative styles, and audience behaviours. With dozens of partners, artists, and venues involved, the project required a digital strategy flexible enough to adapt to every artform while maintaining a consistent, recognisable brand presence.
EastSide Arts has grown into one of Belfast’s most dynamic creative platforms, showcasing both emerging and established talent while supporting the city’s thriving cultural ecosystem. With that growth comes complexity — multiple marketing voices, shifting audience expectations, and a packed summer events calendar competing for attention.
Our goal was to create clarity and cohesion across all digital touchpoints while preserving the creative personality that defines EastSide. This meant developing a unified voice and visual language that could represent the full breadth of the festival - from intimate community performances to large-scale headline events.
Approach
FrontLeft worked in close partnership with the EastSide Arts Festival team to build a unified, performance-driven digital presence for the 2025 campaign. Our work spanned full social media management across Instagram and Facebook, delivering consistent, high-quality content that engaged audiences of all ages and artistic interests.
We coordinated directly with artists, venues, press, and event organisers to align messaging and create collaborative posts that extended reach through shared networks. Our paid advertising strategy used multi-tiered Meta campaigns targeting precise demographics and interests - from theatre enthusiasts to families and local music fans, with real-time tracking to refine creative and spend.
Alongside this, we produced a rich mix of short-form video, design assets, and storytelling-led content that highlighted local talent and gave the festival a dynamic visual identity. The seamless collaboration between internal teams and external partners ensured that every aspect of the campaign remained cohesive, efficient, and strategically aligned across all channels.
results
The 2025 digital campaign delivered exceptional creative and commercial outcomes for EastSide Arts Festival, reinforcing its position as one of Belfast’s leading cultural events:
Advertising Performance: Paid media achieved an 11.2x return on ad spend, setting a new benchmark for digital efficiency within the arts and culture sector.
Audience Engagement: Overall engagement increased by 100% year on year, reflecting the strength of consistent creative output and refined campaign strategy.
Event Success: The festival delivered over 50 successful events, including a series of sold-out shows, proving the effectiveness of integrated social and paid media activity.
Digital Strategy: EastSide Arts now operates with a cohesive, data-informed digital framework that unites organisers, artists, and venues under one recognisable brand identity.
Brand Development: The festival has evolved into a modern, confident, and connected digital brand, balancing creative authenticity with measurable results.