Weekly round-up: 20 January 2012

20 January 2012

Congratulations to Raymond Keaveney on his retirement: 23 years' service to the National Gallery of Ireland!

A busy week on the arts scene with lots of news & goings-on:

My colleague Dr Maeve Houlihan (UCD School of Business & a long term lecturer in our MA Arts Management) is co-convening a session at the upcoming World Congress of the International Federation of Scholarly Associations of Management — being held this June at University of Limerick! Her session is entitled ‘Services, Events and Arts Management‘ and paper abstracts will be accepted until 31 January.

Lots of news on the Director front… long-serving Director of the National Gallery Raymond Keaveney retired on 11 January, and Sarah Glennie was announced as the new Director of IMMA.

NUIG has announced its new 4-year BA in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, in collaboration with Druid, Galway Arts Festival and Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe.

Ni hao, Dublin Chinese New Year Festival! This is a month traditionally light on festival-type activities, so the New Year Festival’s launch today will provide some cheer in January’s gloom. May be time to break out my rusty Mandarin…

Three new positions coordinating Music Generation projects in Laois, Cork and Wicklow have been announced (the first two have been posted in the Jobs section of this site; the third has yet to be advertised).

The ever-interesting THEATREclub at Project Arts Centre is hosting a new series of discussions and workshops to accompany its latest production ‘The Family’, reflecting on contemporary Irish family life & related social issues.

The Limerick City Gallery of Art launched its snazzy newly refurbished building this week — by all accounts it’s a fabulous space.

DCAL has announced details of a £5,000 Culture Tech grant open to organisations and individuals based in Derry, aimed at projects combining cultural endeavours and digital technology — deadline is 17 February.

The Lighthouse Cinema reopened to the public today under the new management of Element Pictures (yay!) and I’ve just been alerted to VOLTA, a new on-demand Irish indie film & video service… very tempting (and great name, by the way)!

According to a recent RTE press release, its spring schedule includes “‘Masterpiece: Ireland’s Most-Loved Painting’, a major new programme that will kick off a five-week RTÉ-wide campaign to find Ireland’s favourite painting.” Hmm….

The Irish Museums Association’s latest members’ field trip is on the 28th of January to the Little Museum of Dublin and the Freemasons’ Hall… bound to be a popular one! Book in by emailing Gina at office@irishmuseums.org.

The Irish Times Theatre Awards nominee list was announced on Saturday; here’s the full list and some reflections of the jury.

Unfortunately news came this week of the untimely death of the wonderful artist Paddy Jolley, who died unexpectedly in India. A fund has been set up to assist his family in the immediate aftermath; please contribute if you can.

1 Comment | Arts education, Cinema, Cultural diversity, Event announcements, Funding, Museum, Music, Performing Arts, Professional training, Research & Resources, Techonology, Theatre, Visual Arts | Permalink
Posted by Emily MFG

Weekly round-up: 12 December 2011

12 December 2011

South Dublin County Council's new public art site

The big news last week was of course the budget… the National Campaign for the Arts and Laurence Mackin of the IT have provided the details of cuts to the budget (and full details are available from the Department)… a few key points:

  • Gross funding in 2012 for the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht will be €267 million (plus an extra €8.6 million in funding for the National Gallery.) Note that it’s not possible to assess, strictly speaking, how this compares with previous years, due to the shifts in department make-up.
  • However, overall 49% of the department’s budget (€129.6 million) is being allocated in 2012 to Arts, Culture and Film programme areas. Arts current funding is down 6%: from €124 million to €117 million.
  • The Arts Council is down 3.2%, from €65.16 to €63.1 million.
  • Arts capital funding is the most severely hit — down 34% from €32 million to €21 million. Most of this (13.2 million) is allocated to the Irish Film Board, and constitutes their annual funding (despite the ‘capital’ label)- although their funding is down overall by 14.9%.
  • Culture Ireland will be down 11%.
  • How did the national institutions fare? National Archives (-5%); IMMA, CBL, NCH and the Crawford (-4%); NMI (-5%); NLI (-7%). However these figures don’t count huge drops in capital budgets, which will severely affect the national institutions’ plans for developing infrastructure and other crucial projects.

Although the overall funding picture appears to be better than expected, the national institutions will be hard hit, and there will be other financial implications from ancillary budget measures for arts organisations (the increase in VAT, for example, as well as the decrease in CE funding which many organisations rely upon).

In other news…the Arts Council has announced its 2012 project grant recipients — an interesting look at work which lies ahead!

The new director of the National Gallery was finally announced — and it’s Sean Rainbird, current Director of the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, who also worked for many years at the Tate. Word has it that current staff are delighted with the appointment — I think it will be a much-needed breath of fresh air into the gallery, and look forward to his tenure!

South Dublin County Council has unveiled a new public art website — searchable and snazzy — and very useful for students of public art projects.

Fintan O’Toole has blasted the Abbey’s latest production of The Government Inspector, and decried (again) what he perceives is the national theatre’s failure to actively engage with the current breakdown of Irish society.

The Music Generation programme is being expanded to Laois, Wicklow and Cork City — no doubt news of new opportunities will soon follow…

The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival has announced its call for volunteers.

An interesting article in the Guardian (‘Should the arts be more selective about sponsors?‘) canvassed reactions to the withdrawal of two poets from the TS Eliot prize competition over their objections to the award’s sponsorship by a hedge fund.

I’m really digging all the posts at the Guardian’s Culture Professional Network blog… tons of interesting and useful posts there to anyone working in the field.

Not strictly arts-related, but if you are a researcher check out the new British Newspaper Archive project from the British Library (lovingly reviewed by the fantastic Bioscope blog) — it’s gonna rock your world.

And finally… congrats to our fantastic 2011 class of Arts Management & Cultural Policy MA graduates! It was wonderful to see them in the glad rags last week at commencement :) :)

Hope everyone is enjoying all of the holiday activities across town — such a busy time of year!

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Posted by Emily MFG

Weekly round-up: 29 November 2011

29 November 2011

'Buddie and Hallie' by Mike Disfarmer (c.1940-45), part of exhibition on now at the Douglas Hyde Gallery

Glad to be back in Ireland again after many weeks of travel (well, excepting the weather today)! Today’s a bumper round-up to amend for my absence!

Following Professor Niamh O’Sullivan’s retirement, the key post of Head of Visual Culture at NCAD has been advertised.

Delighted to see that Justin Carville, lecturer in photography at IADT, has published his volume on Photography & Ireland, which will fill a significant scholarly gap in the field… congrats Justin!

In other photography goings-on… the new show just opened of Mike Disfarmer’s photography at the Douglas Hyde Gallery looks fantastic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen his vintage photos shown here in Ireland, so this is a great opportunity to have a look-see.

In today’s Irish Times, Aidan Dunne feeds the rumour mill over new director appointments at IMMA and the NGI: it’s a bit gossipy really, and focusing on only the Irish potential candidates (not all of whom are really credible candidates) distracts from the real need for fresh blood at these museums. More importantly however, he pooh-poohs the silly idea of merging national institutions that’s been mooted *again* as a cost-saving measure.

Still waiting to hear further details of plans by IMMA to take over Earlsfort Terrace for exhibition purposes in 2012… would love to see some really exciting shows there, on a scale that’s not always possible at Kilmainham.

Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian has penned a column urging the UK government to protect free museum entry, a much-lauded achievement of the Labour years that’s under scrutiny as the belt tightens.

Whoa nelly: I had to scrape my jaw off the floor after reading about the launch in rural Arkansas of the ‘Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’, funded by Walmart’s heiress at a price tag of $1.4 billion (yes, billion). Seems not everyone is so impressed…

Woop woop! Boulder Media (a Dublin animation company well known to me & my kin!!) has just won a Children’s BAFTA for its co-produced series ‘The Amazing World of Gumball’. Congrats folks!!

On December 6th Dublin City Council’s Arts Office is hosting a meeting at its offices: ‘Unoccupied Retail and Commercial Spaces – Is this a cultural opportunity for Dublin? An open conversation for Artists, Arts organisations, City officials, Landlords and Letting agents.’ Today is the deadline for registrations…

Calling young (18-30) artists! Sky Arts (in association with Arts & Business UK) is giving away £30,000 each to five artists to help fund their work for a year (disciplines include visual art, theatre, performance art, film, music, dance or literature, and it’s open to Irish applicants). Business to Arts is hosting an information session on the scheme on 14 December from 2-5 pm at the Science Gallery, but booking is required.

It’s a few weeks old, but in case you missed it, Mick Heaney’s article on the relationship between arts and politics in the Irish Times was a thoughtful, very well written piece; I would share his ambivalence over the increasing tendency to reduce the cultural agenda to a creative industries one, and the general disregard/low valuing of cultural activity by our political class.

Rise Productions has recently developed a series of podcasts with Irish theatre-makers (so far featured are Peter Daly, Philly McMahon and Aoife Spillane-Hinks) — well worth a listen!

Building on the popularity of their various pop-up shops (and just in time for Christmas), the RHA is welcoming the Irish Design Shop as a long-term resident in its shop space from 7 December (see press release here).

From 2-4 December, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios will be hosting the Dublin Art Book Fair & Magazine Archive, featuring twenty publishers (Irish and international) of art books, a series of talks aimed at artists/publishers/designers etc, and of course the lovely books themselves!

The NOISE Sounds Music Festival is inviting applications from young performers (13-25) in all genres (pop, electronic, DJ, brass, rock, trad, classical etc) to participate in a series of live gigs alongside professional musicians. The gig’s in February, but deadline for applications is 15 December!

Stranded Aoife’s written a lovely piece paying tribute to Donal Dineen’s radio programme The Small Hours (drawing to a close this week), laced with a bit of righteous annoyance at the lack of quality music programming it leaves in its wake:

There are a small number of excellent music broadcasters on the irish airwaves, but the vast majority of the output is being dumbed down for the so called masses. We’re being target marketed to such an extend that genres and sub genres are dictating playlists, and we’re in danger of disappearing into ever decreasing circles of sameness. It’s getting to the point where it’s rare to encounter music on the radio, rare to have things suggested to you that you might like, instead of things the computer thinks we’ll like. There is nothing more infuriating than programming that doesn’t trust its audience’s intelligence, or our ability to adapt, and the disappearance of this show just adds another nail to that particular coffin.

Still flying the flag for wonderful music — Music Network’s announced details of its Spring season ticket (a real bargain) with a fantastic line-up for the beginning of 2012.

The Ark will be collaborating with the Science Gallery to develop a special ‘artscience’ exhibition for Dublin City of Science 2012, and has issued a call for creative practitioners interested in submitting ideas — deadline is 6 January!

… and if you’re at a loose end tomorrow, pop down to the Science Gallery’s next Make Night on 30 November from 6-8 pm, the casual creative/making sessions that are kicking off again — tomorrow’s theme is ‘Christmas Jumpers‘ — reindeers ahoy.

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Posted by Emily MFG

Weekly update – 19 September 2011

19 September 2011

Back on the grid… and a heck of a week ahead:

The Absolut Dublin Fringe Festival charges into its second (and final) week… I’m looking forward to smooshing in as much as I can over the next few days (and maybe even darning a few socks)!

Culture Night is the other massive event this week – Friday 23 September. The scale of the ever-expanding arts & culture bonanza is truly mind-boggling, and it’s not just Dublin — 30 other regions across Ireland are participating this year. Put on some good walking shoes, plan ahead, and plan for alternatives (since many events get packed out early)!

Nosey nellies will have their prayers answered with the Irish Museum Association’s upcoming members’ trip to the new storehouses of the National Museum in Swords on 24 September. These are new state-of-the-art collections management facilities totaling more than 200,00 sq. feet. Book soon, this is bound to be a popular visit!

The National Campaign for the Arts has a series of key events happening this week: on Wednesday the Minister will be addressing a session of the Seanad (members of the public may attend but must request admission); on Thursday constituency coordinators are meeting in the National Concert Hall to discuss next steps, and on Friday the NCFA is hosting a presidential hustings in the IFI (attendance is free, but arrive early!) Details of all these events (and contact information) is located on the NCFA’s website.

The Contemporary Music Centre’s new music series New Sound Worlds begins Weds. 21 September in the National Concert Hall, the first of eight concerts curated by Siobhan Cleary.

Anyone watching Craft Master on RTE? I’m not usually one for reality shows, but this is a canny way of getting exposure for new craft practitioners (beyond the cheesy Nationwide profile). It started on 6 September but runs until 11 October on Tuesdays at 7 pm.

Taking a page from the UpStart‘s creative General Election poster campaign, Fire Station Artists’ Studio (in collaboration with the Danish collective Kuratorisk Aktion) has commissioned a project and poster campaign entitled ‘Troubling Ireland‘, ongoing in Dublin City Centre until the 23rd of September.

Keep your eyes peeled… Open House Dublin 2011 (themed ‘The Architecture of Change’) runs from 7-9 October; this season’s brochures are scattered round the city & are beautifully designed.

I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth saying twice… The Irish Writers’ Centre is launching its Novel Fair Competition on Wednesday 21 September, which will give unknown novelists a chance to compete for big-time exposure and possible contracts.

Lots of interesting board positions have opened up in the North — Northern Ireland Screen (23 Sept deadline), the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (30 September deadline), and the Northern Irish Museums Council (7 October deadline, seeking a Director) are seeking expressions of interest/applications from potential candidates.

The Friends of the National Collections of Ireland have a new website! Founded by Sarah Purser in 1924, the Society still works to donate works of special importance to public collections in Ireland.

MOMA’s increasing its admission price from $20 to $25 — yeowch! Good debate follows in the comments on the NY Times’ opinion piece.

‘Per Cent for Public Art‘ is the title of an upcoming forum on public art in Ireland on 14 October in Wexford, presented by Articulate (a very motivated & accomplished group of former UCD MA students), and sponsored by the Arts Council, OPW, Wexford local authorities, UCD & others. The keynote speaker is Sara Reisman, director of NYC’s Percent for Art scheme, and the programme of participants looks fantastic for anyone interested in Irish public art.

CREATE (the national development agency for the collaborative arts) is looking for a new director, but they’re also running an upcoming symposium on the Arts and Civil Society at the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork on 20-21 October. Again lots of great speakers, although it’s lamentable a more affordable concession offer is not available, especially given the subject of the event.

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Posted by Emily MFG

Weekly round-up: 22 August 2011

22 August 2011

Heritage Week 2011

It’s Heritage Week! There are special events happening at museums & cultural sites across the country — you can download a free iPhone app to keep track of them all, and plan outings until the 28th…

Speaking of iPhone apps.. Irish developer Justin McKeown asked me to have a look at his ArtWorker app, designed to help visual artists in valuing their work, time spent delivering workshops and other services, etc. It’s pretty nifty all right, especially the ability to help folks calculate a daily rate/hourly rate. I think the calculation of artwork value is a little fuzzier (as you’re meant to input your ‘level of recognition’, which can be pretty hard to assess, and has an important impact on price), but no doubt further improvements & refinements will be implemented. Worth a look/download if you’re figuring out how to value your work or time! I’m sure Justin would appreciate any feedback from artists on what other features they’d like to see..

Last week the  impressive programme for the upcoming Belfast Festival was also launched… I’d love to see Cuban ballet sensation Carlos Acosta, the Shipwrecked theatre piece (based on the wreck of the Spanish Armada), and the intriguing-sounding Woyzeck on the Highveld (a collaboration between artist William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company, famed for their London-based War Horse production). The hubs will no doubt make a beeline for Jan Garbarek & the Hilliard Ensemble (one of his favourite pairings). The Festival takes place 13-20th October but many of these events will undoubtedly sell out quickly!

The festivals are still coming thick and fast… this upcoming weekend sees the grassroots effort the Kilmainham Arts Festival, with a great range of music, visual arts, and literaryactivities in the Dublin 8 area on Saturday and Sunday. Here’s the full programme!

Boardmatch.ie has just relaunched its website… if you’ve an interest in joining the board of a nonprofit arts & cultural organisation, it’s a good place to start…

In news that’s received a mixed response (given the impending rise in energy charges), Bord Gáis has struck a naming/sponsorship deal with the Grand Canal Theatre. At least it will be an easy walk from their new premises on Warrington Place…

UCD, TCD and the NLI have announced joint plans to develop new preservation & storage spaces to address their collection challenges, sparked by a $50k grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation. As a frequent user of all these collections I hope the government will see fit to prioritise this initiative, which is absolutely essential for the support of research and public accessibility of these marvellous resources.

Uh oh… the former owners of Bewley’s on Westmoreland Street are in trouble over damage to the historic Joshua Clarke windows (father of Harry) located in the former cafe. It’s terribly sad to see that space still shuttered… I remember many a rainy afternoon ensconced in its gloomy interior when I first moved to Dublin!

Reports of The Gloaming (Irish trad supergroup of Thomas Bartlett, Dennis Cahill, Martin Hayes, Iarla Ó Lionaird & Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh) are, well, glowing… following their concert last Saturday at the National Concert Hall is a range of dates across the country…  you’d be nuts to miss it if they’re coming to your area!

News that BBC4′s schedule and budget will be pared back came as unhappy news to Irish viewers lucky enough to access its fantastic arts programming… there’s nothing on TV like it! Since we don’t pay the license fee it’s difficult to have a direct impact, but you can still sign one of the online petitions to protect its place in the broadcasting schedule.

Missed last night’s live stream of Britten’s opera ‘The Turn of the Screw’ direct from Glyndebourne? By all accounts it was smashing, and still available to view from the Guardian’s website until 12 September.

A lovely article on the United Arts Club on Upper Fitzwilliam Street is in the Irish Times… sounds like a club I’d love to belong to (and membership rates are quite reasonable) — looks like quite a step up from the UCD Faculty Club! :)

Finally, CAO offers to first year students have gone out today following release of Leaving Cert results. The annual news rush of stories about subject points gains & declines(arts/business down, science/tech/ag up), the inequities of the Leaving Cert, and what lies ahead for this year’s new student crop has already begun… I’ve already seen a few newbies (and often parents) wandering around the soon-to-be-busy halls of Belfield, and although I won’t be teaching next year, I wish all of them the very best start to their university career!

 

 

 

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Posted by Emily MFG

Weekly update – 5 August 2011

5 August 2011

Kilkenny Arts Festival launches today! Lots in the programme… we’re heading down tomorrow, looking forward to some visual arts, a bit of music and (since it’s Kilkenny, after all!) a bit of craft. My colleague Pat Cooke is also chairing a session tomorrow on the arts in recession.

Culture Night 2011 will be here before you know it (it’s Sept. 23rd, by the way)! The good folks over at Temple Bar are currently looking for volunteers to assist with the massive culture love-in… find out more about volunteering, and download the application form to send in ASAP!

I’ve just finished updating the jobs page and there’s a remarkable number of posts advertised (including 6 posts at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland) — it’s unusual to see so many jobs in August (usually the slowest month of the year), but promising for all the folks looking to make their next career move.

I mentioned it in last week’s update, but here’s another piece about the training programme in digital media offered by DIT and the Digital Skills Academy at the Digital Hub.

Interesting comments thread over on LinkedIn in response to a media ‘internship’ posting that’s rubbing folks the wrong way (picked up by Broadsheet.ie as well).

Go check our Arthub.ie, a new blog indexing site devoted to Irish blogs on arts and culture.

News that the renovation of Dublin’s Victorian fruit & vegetable market is going ahead & scheduled for a November completion is great news — it’s intended as a showcase for the wonderful small producers locally and from across the country… can we even begin to rival Cork’s English Market?!?

Congratulations to Jo Mangan of the Performance Corporation, who’s been selected as the Jerome Hynes Clore Fellow by the Arts Council!

I was very sorry to hear today of the passing of Eamonn O’Doherty, one of Ireland’s most accomplished sculptors, whose work I’ve written about quite extensively. His work includes the Anna Livia fountain, the James Connolly monument, and my favourite piece, the Westchester Irish Famine Memorial. A great sculptor and a lovely, growly man who will be much missed!!

I’ve recently taken over from Arts Audiences’ James Kelly as the admin for the LinkedIn Arts Ireland group — 560 current members! If you use LinkedIn and work professionally in the arts, join us over there for discussions & interesting postings re: arts & culture in Ireland.

Sharks are pretty awesome (not arts-related strictly speaking, but it is shark week after all).

 

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Posted by Emily MFG

Weekly round-up: 28 July 2011

28 July 2011

Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival 2011

It’s been a while, but I missed ya. Here’s the latest round-up:

First Thursdays in Temple Bar (where cultural organizations stay open extra late) keeps getting bigger and bigger – check it out next week if you haven’t already!

While I was away the Arts Council appointed Orlaith McBride as its new director… still no white smoke on the new director of the National Gallery, however!

I was very sorry to hear of the passing of artist Bill Crozier — a lovely man and a wonderful artist, I interviewed him a few years ago for a book on Stoney Road Press and recently enjoyed seeing his work at the RHA Annual Exhibition. He was extremely warm, funny and generous and we had a wonderful time speaking about our shared love of jazz, among other things! His work will be a wonderful legacy of a great personality and aesthetician.

The Music Generation project is underway (with a coordinating post still open in Co Mayo) and a national seminar to alert folks to further funding opportunities and other aspects of the programme will take place in September and is now accepting registrations.

There’s so many folks looking for work out there at the moment (mucho trafico on the jobs & internships page at the minute) – and if you’ve an interest in upskilling in digital media, and have been unemployed for 6 months or more,  the WebElevate programme (in conjunction with DIT and the Digital Skills Academy) is offering 120 funded places on a series of courses to be run in the Digital Hub.

Lots happening in theatreland… Willie White was appointed as the new Artistic Director of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival to cheers all round! Congrats to Willie – there will be big shoes to fill at the Project!

Meanwhile both the Absolut Fringe Festival and the Theatre Festival have announced their programmes – with Irish Theatre Magazine providing a cheeky breakdown of Theatre Fest stats for your amusement J

The Everyman Theatre in Cork has also made a major appointment in its new Director Michael Barker-Caven, relocating to the People’s Republic from the UK.

I was delighted to see Thisispopbaby’s production Alice in Funderland is part of the Abbey’s schedule for 2012 – I missed its original staging and heard rave reviews, so it’s great to see there’ll be a second chance!

One great session at the recent Theatre Forum conference was led by John Deely on career management in the arts; he recently forwarded a useful e-workbook on to participants that might be of interest to many readers – it can be downloaded here.

The Guardian recently featured a polemic blog post on lack of women working in UK theatre – many of the comments are actually better (and more focused) than the original posting, but it makes for a really interesting read.

Festival season is in full swing and this weekend (and my family!) will see the Spraoi in Waterford, the international Street Fair festival. Lots happening over the bank holiday, but The Reich Effect weekend programme (celebrating the work of composer Steve Reich) at the Cork Opera House looks like another great bet if you’re down south.

Open House Dublin 2011 is looking for volunteers! It takes place from 7-9 October and is a fantastic event – have a look at their flier if you have time & energy to spare!

Over my holidays I read with some bemusement further articles on the ambition to turn Bank of Ireland’s College Green premises into a literary/cultural centre (a move strongly rebuffed by the bank) – an Irish Times editorial from a few weeks back offers the sage advice to consider the failure to establish a national opera company and the stagnation of plans to move/expand the Abbey and the National Concert Hall before plowing ahead with another ill-advised capital project.

However I was extremely pleased to hear the Irish Georgian Society has acquired the former Dublin Civic Museum for its new premises and plans to embark on a restoration of the building; we’ve a close relationship in the School with the GS and wish them the best with their snazzy new digs! It’s wonderful to have new life breathed into such an important city space.

The Irish Writers’ Centre is launching a new initiative in its ‘Novel Fair’ event, which invites first-time authors to submit anonymous work to be considered by a judging panel of folks from the publishing industry, and have the opportunity to meet directly with publishers and agents. It sounds like an unmissable opportunity for new writers; the submission deadline is November 11th.

Audiences Northern Ireland has re-launched its website – fancy!

Putting my board member hat on… the Irish Museums Association is seeking contributions (both articles and exhibition/book reviews) to this year’s journal Museum Ireland, the only publication in the country devoted to articles and discussion of museum-related matters. Send ‘em in!

I’m looking forward to seeing the latest exhibition at IMMA of photographs from the David Kronn collection – he’s promised his collection to IMMA, and it looks like a great chance to get a peek at a marvelous private collection.

Dublin-based Irish visual artist Al Freney has had one of his works selected for the prestigious BP Portrait Awards, hosted annually by the National Portrait Gallery in London – congrats! Here’s a press release if you’re interested to know more…

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Posted by Emily MFG

Weekly round-up: 17 June 2011

17 June 2011

Rex Levitates' 'Fast Portraits' upcoming at Project Arts Centre

The updates have slowed a bit with the onset of summer, and this will be the last one until July as I’m off on holidays… however the jobs page will still be updated (lots of new opportunities added in the last few days!)

Theatre Forum knows how to throw a conference — this year’s iteration was excellent (loved Patrick Sanders’ real time illustrations of the action) but if you missed it, lots of photos, podcasts etc have now been posted on the conference website.

Presentations from the recent Visual Arts Audiences seminar held at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios have also been posted — lots of requests for these, especially Una Carmody’s run-through of recent statistics on arts participation and online engagement.

Contemporary dance may not be highest-profile art form in Ireland, but Rex Levitates is one of its best exponents — their latest production (Fast Portraits) hits the stage at Project from June 21-25: ‘inspired by the realistic observations of the true human condition by artists Bill Viola and Caravaggio… Fast Portraits explores the layers of emotion and memory that infuse captured images and transfer them into movement.’ Sounds like it will be a fantastic show!

It’s great to see how Fund It has taken off! A special mention this week of two projects: the Butler Gallery’s book What is Art? is a wonderful project that will publish children’s creative responses to the Gallery’s programme (their Solas education programme, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary). And in a timely riposte to certain Irish Times journalists who say the theatre has failed to address contemporary Ireland — the group THEATREclub and its young members are seeking to fund the production of their show TwentyTen, a six part epic responding to the turbulence of 2010.

The Dalkey Book Festival kicked off today and runs until the 19th– lots of great talks and readings taking place around the seaside village. Events are small and have the tendency to sell out, so get thee to the website if you’re interested in attending!

In honour of Bloomsday yesterday, Imagine Ireland launched a series of interesting and beautifully illustrated ‘imagined’ walks in a series of parks/landscapes in the US which mirror Stephen Dedalus’ peregrinations around Dublin.

Dublin has officially submitted its bid (entitled Pivot Dublin) to become the World Design Capital for 2014. There are 56 cities in the competition, with the shortlist to be announced June 21st! Best of luck (and huge congrats!) to the team involved in the pitch…

The Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht is accepting submissions of interest for open positions on the boards of the Chester Beatty Library, National Archives, National Gallery, Abbey Theatre and Irish Film Board.

Congrats to Colum McCann for winning the €100,000 Impac Literary Prize for Let the Great World Spin! Although the award is based in Dublin (and is the largest literary prize in the world) it’s only been won by an Irish author twice.

Graduate shows from NCAD, IADT and DIT are on now — Aidan Dunne’s thoughtful response to some of the works will be much appreciated, no doubt! — and this is always a fine chance to sample up-and-coming artists; student shows are one of my highlights of the art year.

Dublin Contemporary’s programme will launch on the 23rd of June; lots of work & internship opportunities on offer there at the moment too.

The RHA’s annual Summer Fete fundraiser is tomorrow (Saturday the 18th)! I’m sorry to be missing out on the yummy cake sale, lucky dip draw and other great activities. Now, if they could only find the space for a bouncy dolmen… Temple Bar Gallery & Studios is also throwing a summer fundraising bash with DJs etc (Summer Lightning II) on July 2nd.

That’s it from me for now… headed Stateside to reconnect with the homeland and sample the delights of a west coast summer! See you in July…

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Posted by Emily MFG

Weekly round-up: 1 June 2011

1 June 2011

March 1966 - the theft of Nelson's head (image from the Evening Press)

Last night on the telly Whose Art is It Anyway? hosted by Joe Duffy explored public art in Ireland (catch it on RTE player). I found it disappointing and very narrow in its coverage of the range of work produced across the country, though people keep telling me I should be grateful they had any programme on the subject at all. Balderdash — we should (and I do!) expect more from our national broadcaster.

Still on the public art tip — on the back of last night’s programme I was sent a link to artist Sean Lynch’s online piece on a few of Dublin’s dismantled public monuments (written to accompany his public artwork Me Jewel & Darlin’) — some fantastic images there (including the one above)!

Although I missed the Queen in Cork, a visit to the new Triskel Arts Centre more than compensated — a beautiful exhibition by Vivienne Roche was there consisting of drawings, photographs, projections and some delicate glass pieces — we also ogled the new Christchurch performance space (fab!!) and envied folks attending the Cork Midsummer Festival (11-26 June) who will be able to see Laurie Anderson and Brad Meldhau there (in addition to the other great acts on the programme). We wrapped up the weekend with a wet and windy visit to the Glucksman Gallery at UCC , and finally a trip to Lismore Castle Arts in Waterford. LCA is such a stunning day out — wonderful art space, amazing gardens and public sculptures (missed the David Nash piece last time I was there, and the temp installation by Richard Wright was groovy). They’ve now taken over a small disused church in the village centre (St Carthage Hall) where we viewed a hypnotic and lyrical video piece by Martin Healy — one of the best days out we’ve had in a while (and even my toddler loved it)!

The Irish Pavilion at the 54th annual Venice Biennale featuring artist Corban Walker is opening to the public on 4 June. Looks like a stunning installation — I’m looking forward to hearing back from the lucky ducks headed over this summer.

The juggernaut that is Imagine Ireland rolls onward, with the new programme launched in the wake of Obama’s visit to Ireland (that’s me! By the Thomas Davis Statue! Did you see me waving Barack??) Plaudits for the management, scope and delivery of this initiative have been loud & plentiful — it is probably the most significant cultural initiative of the last year, and a major achievement for the lean machine that is Culture Ireland.

The programme for the 2011 PhotoIreland festival (now in its second iteration) has been announced. Aside from the great list of exhibitions & talks, I’m hankering after the workshops teaching collodion photography & other 19th c techniques (I have a weakness for 19th c. photography, especially stereoscopy!)

The unresolved saga of opera in Ireland continues with the news that the ‘Irish National Opera Company’ has been wrapped up; it was meant to be filling the shoes of dearly departed Opera Ireland, and pushing forward the production of operas nationwide. Although the remit for opera has now been returned to the Arts Council, it’s unclear who (if anyone) will be picking up the gauntlet.

Following on from two recent conferences on museums & new technology attended by lots of Irish folk (MuseumNext and Rethinking Technology in Museums) — a backlash against social media ‘gurus’ here and here?

The recent session in TBG&S on the subject of visual arts audience development was very interesting (especially the presentation from Pete Gomori, the Tate’s marketing manager ) — what also intrigued was the proportion of the day devoted to discussions of social media. A few days later Una Carmody from Arts Audiences summarised some of the latest data about Irish social media usage – lots of interesting tidbits there (84% of Irish internet users utilize social media, for example).

The RHA’s annual show is on — always one of my favourite arts outings of the year!

Tickets for the Dublin Contemporary have also gone on sale.

Next week is Theatre Forum’s annual conference! More than 250 people already signed up to attend — including me! Meanwhile the conference blog has been posting interesting links (on the recent report from Edinburgh on its festivals’ economic impact, which uses metrics beyond the hackneyed multiplier — Anne Bonnar’s blog has additional commentary).

‘The Art Books of Henri Matisse’ has opened at the Chester Beatty Library — I’ve written a piece on the exhibition for forthcoming Irish Arts Review as well — a great chance to see some brilliant, rarely-exhibited works in Ireland.

IMMA’s left its difficult teenage years behind… a full day of events took place on May 27th for their 20th birthday, but the celebrations continue with their exhibition Twenty, and the Forbidden Fruit festival this weekend (not sponsored by IMMA, but taking place on their grounds).

Finally… on 12 June the Dublin City Gallery – The Hugh Lane will be hosting a public conversation with feminist art icon Judy Chicago — bound to be packed, so get there early!

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Posted by Emily MFG

Weekly round-up: 16 May 2011

16 May 2011

I’m late this week (or early, depending on your perspective), but exam marking is finished for the year – woo hoo! Lots on the wire over the past few days (and not all Eurovision or Queen-related):

Most intriguing was the news at the weekend that the state is keen to take back Bank of Ireland’s College Green buildings ‘for cultural uses’ on foot of its bailout arrangements with the bank. Apparently the Minister wishes to turn the historic building into a ‘tourist attraction’ of some kind: ‘His plans, which are at a preliminary stage, envisage the conversion of the building into a centre celebrating Dublin’s literary heritage, incorporating an exhibition space and reading rooms as well as a cafe and meeting rooms. Mr Deenihan’s spokeswoman said he was examining a number of venues for a “world literature centre”, but that no decision had been taken yet on a location.’ An interesting proposal — but can or will the government actually stump up for such a large potential development? Such ‘grand gestures’ of the capital kind have been a feature of every government, but it’s the ongoing investment in the arts (and provision of programming, administrative overhead, etc) that’s proven more difficult to source over the years. It will take some delicate negotiation to ensure such a project doesn’t wind up another white elephant, another unsustainable or irrelevant ‘arts centre’, or a further drain on already meagre resources. And frankly, publishing a range of fairly daft public suggestions  in the Irish Times (eh, they’re not knocking it down, folks) — and the short-term memories which appear to have forgotten there WAS an arts centre there until recently! — isn’t quite the discussion this project needs. The prospect exercises me greatly because in my view, this is the most magnificent civic complex in Dublin city centre, and we haven’t a great history of being sympathetic to our architectural heritage.

In further NAMA-related developments, the National Gallery is receiving the gift of a Lavery painting ‘Return from Market’ (cheeky choice!) as a thank-you from the agency for storing works to be resold from Derek Quinlan’s collection. The rest of the collection is supposedly being offered first to the NGI/IMMA/OPW (although their acquisition budgets are tiny, so I’m not sure how this will pan out!) before going to public auction. Note to NAMA: I have a very secure, dry attic, and a Roderic O’Conor would do nicely for our living room wall.

Dublin Dance Festival began on Friday, and continues until May 28th. I’m quite taken with the description of Hiroaki Umeda’s Haptic & Adapting for Distortion (and the graphics remind me of a Peter Kogler exhibition I saw at MUMOK some years ago – most groovous).

Today the National Campaign for the Arts coordinated a series of 40+ ‘meet & greets’ between arts folks and local TDs — Tania Banotti (head of Theatre Forum) was likewise recently profiled in the Irish Times on her involvement with the campaign. It’s great to see ongoing enthusiasm for the campaign — and significant fundraising achieved for their efforts.

Temple Bar Gallery & Studios recently launched its new website — very snazzy — and I’m looking forward to attending their symposium on Visual Arts Audiences on Wednesday.

The Irish Architecture Foundation has launched Architecture Tours Ireland, offering five new ongoing public tours: ‘Dublin Docklands’,'Georgian Dublin’, ‘Temple Bar’, ‘The Living City’, ‘Children’s Activity Tour’. Hopefully they’ll find great success with this initiative; with so much fascinating architectural history condensed in the city centre, it seems a natural fit!

Good news that imprisoned Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei was finally allowed a family visit, although his situation still looks far from encouraging — the amount of public pressure and denouncement of his detention has been quite astonishing, and the Chinese government’s lack of response even more so.

The Contemporary Music Centre will be staging its last new music salon until the fall — the final performance on 25 May sounds intriguing:  ‘a music theatre piece based on the diaries and poetry of Sir Ernest Shackleton and Bill Manhire’.

I received a link today to a new blog focused on studio visits throughout Ireland — From the studio of… — sounds like a great idea, and a promising theme — I’ve got ya bookmarked!

Loughlin Deegan will be leaving the helm of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival to take up the juicy post of Director of the Lir, the new national academy for the performing arts envisaged as the RADA of Ireland.

Gemma Tipton in today’s Irish Times wrote on grassroots/artist-led initiatives in a time of recession (a subject of one of last year’s MA theses, and another this year as well) — in related news the collectively-run space The Complex avoided eviction in the ill-starred Smithfield development this week thanks to the intervention of Minister Deenihan, as reported in Le Cool.

And finally… big congrats to Jessica Fuller, who’s currently upgrading her MA with us — she was the driving force behind the first project to be awarded funding under the National Music Education Programme — known as ‘Music Generation‘ (sponsored by U2 and the Ireland Funds and managed by Music Network), the most important scheme funding music education in the country. Three years of development are now ahead for the Sligo Music Education Programme (SMEP) in partnership with Music Generation — looking forward to great things ahead!

I’m off this weekend to visit Cork, avoid the Queen and check out new stuff at the Glucksman, Triskel and Lismore Castle Arts — may not be back with another update until next week, so behave yourselves in the meantime.

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Posted by Emily MFG

Weekly round-up: 27 April 2011

27 April 2011

Though I’ve been occupied stuffing myself with Easter chocolate, basking in the spring sunshine, and feeling the glow of two long weekends with a royal wedding sandwiched in the middle, it’s time for another round-up…

Jazz-heads are gearing up for a few weeks of delectable treats — Improvised Music Company’s 12 Points! European Jazz festival begins at Project Arts Centre on 4th of May, while the long-running Bray Jazz Festival is this weekend! Lots of chatter meanwhile on Jim Carroll’s recent blogpost on issues surrounding jazz promotion & attendance in Ireland, followed by an article in today’s IT by Laurence Mackin on the changing face of contemporary jazz. Some of the best gigs I’ve been to in Ireland have been jazz — Tomasz Stanko, EST, Bobo Stenson, and Marcin Wasilewski are a few that spring to mind –  and according to my extra-jazzy husband (who co-presents Jazz-o-rama on Dublin City FM), Phronesis is the hot ticket at 12 Points this year.

Mindfield (the ‘international festival of ideas’) begins this Friday in Merrion Square and runs through Sunday. Though to my mind a leetle on the pricey side (69 yo-yos for a full festival pass, or a tenner for each event) there are quite a few free workshops & family events. I’m a fan of the quick-fire Ignite concept of 10 speakers + 20 slides + 5 minutes, but there’s a whole range of interesting talks and hands-on events throughout the weekend.

Seriously digging the idea of Druid staging The Cripple of Inishman on, well, Inis Meáin. Locals have first dibs on tickets for the 26 July performance (sales opened yesterday to Aran Islands residents), with the remainder going on sale to the public on 23 May.

Yesterday’s Irish Times carried a special supplement featuring the programme for the Bealtaine Festival (‘Celebrating Creativity in Older Age’) which begins this Sunday. They’re also currently recruiting for Cultural Companions, a programme which matches seniors with folks interested in accompanying them to cultural events (applications are being accepted for North Dublin and Cork).

On the other end of the age spectrum, Sheila Wayman in the IT wrote yesterday about involving children in arts activities from an early age, citing the importance of introducing them to arts experiences outside of school structure. As the mama to a 18 month old little guy, I found the list of available activities very useful — with the baby boom in Ireland still in full flush, young families will be an important market & audience for arts organisations for some time…

I’ll be popping in to the Science Gallery’s new exhibition HUMAN+ tomorrow — Director Michael John Gorman recently penned a piece on the Guardian’s Science blog about the show that’s sold it to me!

The Galway City Museum is set to be re-furbished; it will be closed until early June to facilitate work, presumably in time for the Galway Arts Festival in July!

A quirky news item in the Independent last week noted that several roadside public sculptures from Kildare and Kerry have been stolen (presumably melted down for scrap). Obviously this is a distressing issue for the county councils and artists involved — though I must admit given the state of some of our public sculptures, these thieves might be doing us a roundabout favour (pun intended).

Temple Bar Cultural Trust is calling for interested participants for Culture Night 2011; deadline for expressions of interest is the 27th of May.

In an expected but warmly welcomed move, Arts Minister Jimmy Deenihan issued a call for interested applicants to apply for board positions at the National Concert Hall, IMMA, Irish Architectural Archive, Arts Council, and Heritage Council. This is part of efforts by the Department to increase transparency as regards governance and recruitment, and to avoid the sinkhole of political appointee-ism that’s plagued some of our cultural institutions. There’s no guarantee appointees will be drawn from this open application process, nonetheless it’s a great step in the right direction. Applications are due May 13th, so get cracking!

The Fundit website’s done extraordinarily well in its first month, raising about 40k! Quite a number of projects have reached their funding targets — but I’d love to see the Irish/Polish Film Project and the Open House Dublin Book Project make it over the line (their funding target has to be met for them to receive any moola) — have a look & consider sending a few euro their way??

The worst news of the past 2 weeks? The closure of the Lighthouse Cinema, after the failure to reach an agreement with the current landlords and the appeal for mediation rejected. I still have difficulty believing there’s no alternative in this case; it makes me physically sick to think of that wonderful facility lying empty. Will this be the final death knell for the Smithfield redevelopment dream?

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Posted by Emily MFG

Weekly round-up: 6 April 2011

6 April 2011

Photo from the Irish Times, 5 April 2011: Rob Dunne and Antoinette Emoe prepare Diego Rivera's Landscape with Cacti for hanging at Imma. Photograph: Alan Betson

A sooper-dooper bumper round-up for today, to make up for my absence over the past 2 weeks (travelling for conferences & wrapping up MA course for 2010-11!) I’ve made a few sub-headings to make navigating this update easier; I promise not to stay away so long next time!

Jobs / internships

Want to work for the Arts Council? Now’s your chance… currently hiring a new Director and 15 (!) new arts advisors across all disciplines, so dust off the CV….

I’ve been following news on changing practices around internships/work placements in the UK (see previous post): just yesterday the Guardian reported on Nick Clegg’s admission of the advantage conferred to him via a placement in his youth arranged by his father.  There’s been a recent push in government (as part of a ‘social mobility’ campaign) to increase application transparency, fair remuneration, and access to internships in desirable professions — an issue of importance here in Ireland as well, though this has yet to be addressed in any substantial way. Groups/blogs like Intern Aware and Interns Anonymous have formed in the UK to push for reform and improve access (although I would disagree with their distinctions drawn between ‘interning’ for a company and ‘volunteering’ with a charity as neglecting/mis-characterising the non-profit sector); is it time for similar action here in Ireland?

Awards Season

Congratulations to the Science Gallery for its recent Shorty Award (for the best Cultural Organisation) at the ‘Oscars of Twitter’, and to Vulgo.ie for its triumph as best Arts & Culture blog at the Irish Blog Awards in late March!

Budget woes & money matters

The Lighthouse Cinema is embroiled in a rent dispute with its landlord, who recently doubled the rent from 100k to 200k. The future of the cinema is of great concern to its patrons, local residents in Smithfield and taxpayers (especially since the government invested €1.75 million in its development). The petition by the landlord to wind up the lease has been adjourned to allow for board discussions; it’s also been suggested that the Cultural Cinema Consortium (formed by the Arts Council and the Irish Film Board) who initially invested in the project might take it over as a going concern… Certainly I’d be of the view it’s the best arthouse cinema in Dublin (sorry IFI!), although the decline of the Smithfield development and its failure to secure lasting tenants is obvious to anyone visiting, and a clear obstacle the cinema’s struggled to deal with. Will keep you posted…

As the Arts Council England finally sent out funding notifications to organisations,  the scale of cuts was wide enough to warrant massive coverage in all the UK dailies (I follow the Guardian mainly) and even feature on a Newsnight segment. 206 organisations had their funding cut completely, and supporters of various organisations and artforms fumed. The Arts Council itself recently came in for strongly worded criticism and an order to sell off big chunks of its collection, whilst the CEO of ACE answered tough online questions about funding decisions. It’s almost too much to digest, especially at a distance, but my impression is that ACE was in an impossible situation, with nearly every commentator convinced of his/her view that decision X or decision Y was a travesty of judgment — I would have more sympathy with Charlotte Higgins’ view that

… ACE’s behaviour is only a sideshow. The real story here is the gradually corrosive effect of a government that, while paying lip-service to the importance of the arts, seems intent on sleepwalking the nation towards cultural impoverishment. The cuts to ACE cannot be seen in isolation from the removal of public funding for humanities tuition in higher education; the absence of arts subjects from the English baccalaureate; the unstable situation among local authorities, some of which are bravely protecting cultural provision while all too many are cutting it off; the starvation of libraries.

Northern Ireland news

An Arts Hustings for Northern Ireland will be hosted by Arts Audiences NI, Arts & Business, and Voluntary Arts on 19 April at the Grand Opera House in Belfast; representatives from the various political parties will be in attendance, and Declan McGonagle will also be speaking.

Have to give a shout-out to all the fab folks who hosted our MA class recently during our visit to Belfast… thanks to Stephen Douds from BBC NI / Lyric Theatre, Ciara Hickey at the Ormeau Baths Gallery, Kabosh Theatre Company & Paula McKetridge, and Trevor Parkhill at the Ulster Museum for their fabulous hospitality — we had a marvellous time!

New research resources

I was recently alerted to the DHO:Discovery portal, one of the outcomes of the Digital Humanities Observatory project. It provides online access to digitised images, text, and sound recordings from a range of Irish cultural institutions, including the Chester Beatty Library, Irish Traditional Music Archive, and lots of material from TCD’s archives. The interface is clunky, but it’s wonderful to be able to access all of this material so easily, and will prove very useful for researchers.

I heart Ciaran Benson and his lovely writing, and I don’t care who knows it. The Irish Review of Books recently published his review of recent texts on Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland — would that more Irish art criticism (including my own) flowed so beautifully!

The much-anticipated book Ireland, Design and Visual Culture : Negotiating Modernity 1922-1992, edited by Linda King and Elaine Sisson, has just been published. With The Moderns catalogue from IMMA also finally available, I’m looking forward to an imminent immersion in new Irish visual culture research  :)

If new Irish art historical research is your bag (as it’s certainly mine), check out the annual Irish Association of Art Historians’ Study Day, taking place this Saturday (9 April) at IMMA from 10-5. It will be showcasing new research (spanning all periods/geographies of art history) by folks working on this island, and we’re delighted to have three PhD students from our own School presenting as well: Louis Funder, Jessica Fahy and Silvia Guglielmini (download the full programme).

Launches / event announcements / calls for participation

After lots of hard work and enthusiasm Business to Arts formally launched Fundit.ie, a new crowdsourcing platform for funding Irish arts and cultural initiatives. Crowdfunding as a phemomenon recently received a nice write-up in the Irish Times, and already there’s a great clutch of projects seeking funding on Fundit.ie: so far I’ve helped fund Monster Truck’s new digital screen in Temple Bar, IMMA’s efforts to purchase new Bea McMahon drawings, the publication by Conor & David for Open House Dublin, and an Irish/Polish Film Project. One of the caveats of crowdfunding is that organisations don’t receive funds unless their target is reached — so get over there, register, and contribute what you can to what catches your fancy!!

I am gutted I missed last night’s opening at IMMA for the Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera exhibition (complete with tequila and mariachis! In Dublin!! More exclamation marks necessary!!!!) Looking forward to seeing the show in any case (although as an Angelena I’ve seen my fair share of Kahlo & Rivera — and Siquieros and Orozco, who make up the holy trinity of Mexican muralistas). Sure to be a massive crowd-pleaser… (p.s. Aidan Dunne’s reflections on 20 years of IMMA’s history last week made for a nice recap!)

The second meeting of the Visual Arts Workers Forum (WORK IT) is taking place in Project on April 20th — the discussions and planned presentations look great, and are aimed at folks across Ireland working in the visual arts.

Friday is Love : Live Music / National Music Day, coordinated by Music Network — get thee down to one of the many events happening nationwide (the hubs will be hitting the town with junior in tow, seeing how much music he can take til he pops!)

Cinemagic Dublin is currently seeking kids and teenagers 10-18 years in age to sit on its film review jury — if you have any budding film critics knocking about the house, here’s your chance!

The Heritage Council is hosting an  EU Funding Information Event for Heritage Organisations on 13 April at its offices in Kilkenny, which will provide information for individuals and organisations on how to access EU pots o’cash — an underutilised source of funding in Ireland!

Miscellany

Aosdána recently added John Arden, Joseph O’Connor, John Tuomey, Corban Walker and Daphne Wright to their midst… @RositaBoland ‘s twitter reporting of their annual general meeting on April 4th was particularly entertaining (gardening wha?)

The Irish Times debuted its first Culture Podcast yesterday, featuring Fintan O’Toole, Jim Carroll, Rosita Boland and Shane Hegarty.

Puh-lease: 6 hours a week? Explaining what Irish academics do (and justifying the weirdness of our working patterns / heaviness of workload) continues to be the bane of my existence, especially as we’re now meant to conform to the Crazy Croke Park Agreement that’s arbitrarily imposed a demand of an extra hour spent teaching every week, across all levels of education (although I pause in my rant to spare a thought for Queen’s University in Belfast, where colleagues are facing drastic budget measures that will have a terrible impact on working conditions and consequently student experience). Much of the interesting debate on this subject has taken place over on ex-DCU president Ferdinand von Prondzynski’s University Blog (who’s since moved over to Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen). The folks over at DublinIntellectual (particularly Dr Marisa Ronan) are taking matters into their own hands, making efforts to broaden awareness of research conducted by third level academics, by hosting a series of accessible ‘salons’ — the first takes place tonight at 8.30 at the Shebeen on South Great Georges Street.

 

I’m sure I’ve forgotten something… but gotta get back to the day job! :)

 

 

 

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Posted by Emily MFG

Weekly round-up: 11 March 2011

11 March 2011

There was an election, don’t ya know:

  • Fine Gael swept the boards in a resounding victory (although the NY Times couldn’t quite figure out the gender of poor new Taoiseach Enda Kenny) — but pertinent to we arts folks was the announcement of the new Cabinet: Jimmy Deenihan (author of Fine Gael’s pre-election arts policy) was duly named Minister of the re-formatted Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht Affairs. This announcement confirmed election promises to keep the arts at the Cabinet table, but the reconfiguration of the various portfolios was more than a little perplexing (Leo Varadkar was named Minister for Transport, Tourism & Sport). Is this new nomenclature a signal that ‘culture’ will be reinterpreted more narrowly as ‘arts’? What are the consequences of losing the economic clout of tourism (and to a lesser degree sport) and becoming a warmer, fuzzier, and possibly easily sidelined department? Given that the budget of the Heritage Council was recently slashed 47% (following a reduction of 30% last year), this new configuration is worryingly low on punching power.
  • The National Campaign for the Arts provided a handy link to the two arts/culture-related pages of the new Fine Gael/Labour programme for government (click here for pdf): main points are the expansion of Culture Night to 2 nights/year [ok, achievable enough], developing 1916 centenary plan for 2016 [historians here at UCD are already rubbing their hands with glee], promoting geneaological tourism & stimulating diaspora tourism [hmm, is this really a growth area? The digitisation of census records has already had a negative impact on geneaological tourism; this aim feels very 1997], getting Local Authorities to combine arts officers’ roles [rather than providing funding for new/vacated positions], and using empty NAMA buildings for ‘local facilities for arts and culture’ [one thing we're certainly NOT short of in this country is arts facilities, Mr Minister!]. Perhaps most significant was the statement that ‘Responsibility for policy-making will revert to the Department, while agencies will be accountable for implementing policy, assessing outcomes and value for money’ — surely the Department has had little to do with actual direct cultural policy-making in recent years, asserting its interests instead through funding streams and the occasional direct cultural initiative. I’m most interested to see how this might play out in practice.
  • Music Network launched its plans for Love:Live Music National Music Day on April 8th. They’re soliciting new events to be added to the event listings on the site, and promoting a great range of offerings — more will definitely follow on this come April!
  • Most recent Dublin Contemporary news– Art in America featured a small piece on the troubled DC, claiming dismissed curator Thompson’s departure was due to a failure ‘to submit satisfactory plans’. An odd quote from the new curator Christian Viveros-Fauné: ‘”Now is not a good time for art that rubs people the wrong way,” the curator says, but he and Castro, who have collaborated previously, want to be thoughtfully provocative, or, thoughtfully provocative without being aggressive or offensive.’ Hm, this hardly sounds like a recipe for a truly ‘provocative’ programme? Still, there is much goodwill behind the initiative — even if an article in last week’s Sunday Times (no online free version, alas!) pointed out that the very established Lyon Biennale (curated this year by Victoria Noorthorn) begins about a week after the DC and has the exact same title. D’oh!
  • A piece in the Irish Times on Wednesday reported from the EU Culture in Motion conference in Brussels, noting the low uptake of EU Culture funding by Irish organisations (a subject that’s forming the thesis of one of our current MA students). Difficulties forming the partnerships required by EU funding schemes were highlighted, but the picture is definitely more complex than that (on a side note of weirdness, the article’s author seemed not to know who Jordi Savall is! )
  • There was a great article on Saturday in the IT profiling the lovely Catherine Morris, newly appointed ‘cultural coordinator’ at Trinity. Her exhibition at the National Library on Alice Milligan is fab, and demonstrates the wonderful investments made by the NLI in technology & access.
  • One of the most interesting presentations from last week’s Irish Museums Association conference was a virtual walk-through of the new museum in Glasnevin cemetery, which has recently won a major international design award for its stunning building and exhibition. The IMA is leading a tour of the museum tomorrow for its members, but in any case this new museum looks well worth a visit.
  • An event on March 14th co-sponsored by UCD and Gradcam (and featuring both Pat Cooke and Hugh Campbell from UCD as speakers) is entitled ‘Redrawing Dublin‘: ‘a special public seminar in response to the issues, ideas and challenges raised by Paul Kearns and Motti Ruimy’s recent interdisciplinary cultural project, REDRAWING DUBLIN (Gandon Editions, 2010). (…) This seminar offers an interactive opportunity to consider Kearns and Ruimy’s book project within the broader context of debates about urbanism, city cultures and Dublin’s future potential as a vibrant and dynamic metropolitan space.’

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Posted by Emily MFG

Weekly round-up: 4 March 2011

4 March 2011

Finally catching my breath today — here’s the skinny:

  • Tomorrow’s World Book Night! I’m going to be at Starbucks Blackrock from 11 am tomorrow (Saturday) handing out 48 free copies of Beloved by Toni Morrison– come on down!
  • Some choice jobs in the listings this week — positions at Project, Audiences Northern Ireland, South Dublin County Council, etc.!
  • The Dublin Contemporary released the first list of artists who will be participating in the exhibitions– some great names there, including James Coleman, Lisa Yuskavage, and Richard Mosse. I was tickled to see another Peruvian name added to the list (Fernando Bryce) — as a half-Peruvian lady myself (one of my cousins was Miss Arequipa a few years ago in the Miss Peru paegant, hey hey!)  I’m astonished at the sudden influx led by the DC crowd! O’Brien’s will start having to stock pisco next…
  • However in one of the most upsetting announcements this week, a post on CIRCA’s website indicated that the magazine will likely disappear from March onwards. After suffering a disastrous 56% funding cut from the Arts Council last year, the magazine limped on ahead with online publishing. However this doesn’t seem sustainable any longer– it seems hard to believe that we will be without a significant contemporary art publication for the first time in 30 years.
  • Culture Northern Ireland is hosting an event entitled *Showcase on 22nd March, with the juicy theme ‘entrepreneurship and new business models in the cultural industries.’
  • I missed this last week, but Anne Enright authored a great piece in the Economist on Irish artists’ perseverance (and perhaps flourishing?) in the face of the recession.
  • I was delighted to see one of our former students in the Irish Times this week, promoting the Vantastival festival in Co Louth (early bird tickets are on sale now! I do so covet a VW campervan of my own).
  • Don’t forget the the closing date for the Clore Fellowship for cultural leaders from the Clore Foundation/Arts Council is next Friday!
  • The RDS show ‘Dearc 150‘ is ongoing but closes on the 20th of March; the exhibition is celebrating 150 years of the RDS Taylor Art Award by staging a retrospective of past winners, including Walter Osborne, Sir William Orpen, Seán Keating, and more contemporary recipients like James Hanley.
  • I was greatly saddened to hear of the passing of artist TP Flanagan — a marvellous artist who will be much missed!

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Posted by Emily MFG

Weekly round-up: 10 February 2011

10 February 2011

  • Anyone looking for a good intern? Some of our MA in Arts Management & Cultural Policy students are still seeking 8 week work placements this spring/summer in cultural organisations of all stripes (in Ireland/the UK/Europe/US). If you have a special project underway in need of assistance, and/or would like to welcome one of our students into your organisation, email me with details.
  • In a similar vein, the Digital Hub has also issued a call for interested organisations and companies to participate in its ‘Best in Show’ competition, which judges student work & offers placements in Digital Design, Film/Video, Multimedia,Animation, and Audio/Music.
  • Lots going on infrastructurally in the North: the new arts centre in Downpatrick, Co Down has broken ground, and the Lyric Theatre in Belfast’s major new theatre by architects O’Donnell & Tuomey is set to be finished in May; a slew of new jobs have also just been advertised for the venue. I heard a presentation a while back by the architects on the proposed design, and the final result looks to be fab.
  • The Arts Council of Northern Ireland continues its campaign (‘A Fair Deal for the Arts‘) to protect the cultural sector from devastating cuts in the forthcoming budget; a recently published report on the effect of the economic downturn on its regularly funded organisation details the damage that’s already been done.
  • The Department for Education in the UK has published a report on Music Education in England; one would hope its impact will be greater than the much-lauded but little-implemented Points of Alignment (2008) report in Ireland.
  • Culture Ireland’s ‘Imagine Ireland‘ year-long programme of events in the US has received lots of press recently, but on Monday the Irish Times had an interesting profile of the lesser-known Solas Nua center in Washington D.C., dedicated to showcasing contemporary Irish art.
  • The Contemporary Music Centre’s been busy: next Tuesday (the 15th) they’re hosting a day to introduce their ‘Artist in the Community‘ scheme to aspiring composers and musicians; and the 23rd of Feb and 30th of March sees their Nights of New Music programme at the National Concert Hall.
  • An upcoming one-day workshop.seminar on academic blogging is coming up on 4 March at TCD: Honest to Blog: A symposium on web legitimacy is part of an ongoing series on the subject of blogging in the humanities.
  • I’m loving LeCool Dublin’s coverage of arts events and their snazzy website; worth a look-see if you’re not familiar with it already.
  • The National Campaign for the Arts has created a new Twibbon to add to Facebook/Twitter avatars & show your support during the general election campaign.
  • Not arts related, strictly speaking, but one of the best articles I’ve read on the Irish economic crisis was recently published in March’s Vanity Fair.
  • World Book Night is coming up! One million books will be given out during the first week of March in Ireland and the UK, and I’m thrilled to be one of the lucky folks chosen to give out 48 copies of Beloved by Toni Morrison! I’ll be posting details of my master giveaway plan next week if you’re interested in snagging a copy.
  • And just to keep your day sweet… all hail John Mackintosh, the Toffee King. I can assure you in advance you will like it. It is delightful.

Leave a Comment » | Architecture, Arts education, Arts policy, Children & art, Event announcements, Literature, Music, New media, Performing Arts, Professional training | Permalink
Posted by Emily MFG

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