ARCHIVE!!! PUBLISHING !!! PING-PONG!!!

Isn’t counter culture still culture?

Pop by and argue the case with our brand-new, for one-day, and one-day-only, publishing studio. The co-directors have been pouring blood, sweat and tears into reviving the 33-year archive of Catalyst, and we can’t keep COUNTER CULTURE PHENOMENA OF BELFAST to ourselves.

At its core is the rejuvenated archive, reimagined by the co-directors as a series of faux newspapers printed directly onto wooden boxes. These boxes are not just for display, but function as sites of absurdity and experimentation. Arranged in configurations, they will become ping-pong tables, introducing a layer of irony where play, print, and counterculture can collide.

The space expands into three stations forming our temporary publishing studio: a writing station, where participants can contribute short, surreal, or silly stories; a doodle station for spontaneous visual creations and illustrations; and the third station is a surprise activation, an evolving dept. designed to respond to the energy of the night.

Throughout the evening, we’ll be collecting the contributions, which will be curated into a freshly assembled newspaper documenting Counter-Culture Night 2026. There will only be two editions produced: one for the organisers of culture night, and one to go straight into the Catalyst Archive (after being carefully catalogued, of course).