The Belfast Photo Festival returns to Belfast next week, bringing with it one of the largest exhibitions of outdoor visual art ever seen in Northern Ireland.

In its third year, the biennial festival will be delivering an ambitious programme of inspirational events and exhibitions across Belfast city centre, offering new perspectives in photography from sculpture, film, painting and performance.

Since 2011 the major photographic event has attracted thousands of people to Belfast from around the globe and celebrates some of the finest national and international contemporary photography across 30 museums, galleries and public venues.

Director of the Belfast a Photo a Festival, Michael Weir, said it has a lot to offer: "We've spilled out onto the streets this year. It's all about bringing art and photography to the people.

"We went with a theme of convergence and the idea is we're looking at photography and its relationship to other art forms and we're doing that through things like photography and painting, photography and film and phorography and sculpture, so that way people who have an interest in a variety of other art forms will feel that they have a place in this year's festival.

Michael said he wanted to do something really different this time round: "It's going to be quite quirky and fun. It's all about people enjoying photography. We're doing some very exciting projects this year - we're actually building a village. Basically we're installing Writers Square in Belfast with 11 cargo containers as well as wooden cabins.

"We're going to be building a village of photography and the work will be exhibited inside and ouside. It's going to be a really exciting project on a large scale and will house 8 exhibitions.

"We have over 150 artists participating. It's really international but we have a real focus on local talent. It's all about creating a platform to launch Northern Ireland's future artists and creatives.

The Festival is a not for profit organisation that presents one of the leading International Festivals of photography in the United Kingdom and the Visual Arts Festival of Northern Ireland.

It consists of exhibitions, talks, symposiums, workshops, screenings, masterclasses, portfolio reviews and tours. This year's edition takes place from June 4 - 30.