project to address accessibility and safety issues around bonfires. There is close liaison between Fire Brigade, Police Service, City Council and the community representatives responsible for individual bonfires.

The production of bonfires is evidence of extensive ‘grassroots’ self- organisation. The level of co-ordination and co-operation required to accumulate, sort, and transform the detritus of the modern city into the urban spectacle that is the bonfires of ‘the Twelfth’ is a resource unique to Belfast. Many of the bonfires demonstrate an accumulated expertise both of the structural possibilities of materials, and of the choreography of how they burn. The skills, enthusiasm, and organisational capacity required for bonfire construction are comparable to those required for recycling in general. In recent years, Belfast City Council has opened a number of public access recycling centres. These typically comprise a robust surface with a large central sunken area to accommodate large containers for the numerous waste categories, with smaller depositing points located around the perimeter. This surface, animated by people bringing, categorising, and depositing their waste items, appears like a formalised version of the activities at bonfire sites where materials were carefully sorted into piles of varying constructional and flammable qualities in the lead-up to bonfire night......Previous<<<