We are barely a week into December and we have already achieved quite a lot!
The Arts Council is at the heart of the Government’s ‘Creative Ireland’ initiative, and in particular the announcement last week by An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, T.D., together with the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan, T.D., the Minister for Education and Skills, Richard Bruton T.D., and Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe T.D of the ‘Creative Youth’ pillar. We will have more details on the key Scoileanna Ildánaca/Creative Schools element of this pillar, which is being delivered by the Arts Council, early in the New Year.
Also last week, the Council completed its decisions on the first grant offers under our new funding framework. Strategic Funding, Partnership Funding, and Venues Funding, are the first steps in the implementation of our new suite of programmes designed to help us to deliver our strategy. Organisations can expect to receive their letters before the Christmas break.
We are now ready to roll out the next funding programme as part of our framework, which will be called Arts Grant Funding. Our hope that this new programme will enable artists and organisations to engage with the Arts Council in new ways. Details of this new programme will be available in the coming weeks, and we will hold workshops in January, but in the meantime, you can see an overview in this Newsletter.
Arts Grant Funding is a new funding programme that has been developed as part of the Arts Council’s new funding framework. This framework has been informed by, and is designed to deliver on, the commitments set out within the Arts Council’s ten-year strategy, Making Great Art Work.
This year’s Gradam Comharcheoil brings us to the outer edges of where virtuoso traditional music, traditional dance and contemporary dance interact and probe each other’s essence.
Irish language stage artists recently met to participate in the Hare’s Corner, a project funded under the Invitation to Collaboration Scheme that allows practitioners to improve their practice and share ideas with each other.
The Long Night of the Short Story comes to VISUAL, Carlow on 21 December 2017. Curated by Anne Enright in her final event as Laureate, the evening also includes writers Colin Walsh, Nicole Flattery, Belinda McKeon and Sally Rooney, with musical responses from Little John Nee.
The Bridge between European Cultural Centres (BECC) is a European Network of Culutral Centres training, exchange and mentoring programme open to staff members of cultural centres.
As the Creative Europe Desk Ireland – Culture Office looks towards the upcoming deadline for Cooperation Projects on the 18 January 2018 we would like to take a moment to check in with some two projects funded under the 2017 call.
The Arts Council has introduced a Co-funding Award to support the Irish elements of successful Creative Europe Co-operation Projects, following a successful pilot in 2016.
