Greetings readers! Hope your summer was full of wonderful things, even if the sunshine somewhat eluded us here in Ireland… After a break from the blog, I’m getting back into the swing of things — not least since today is the first day of UCD’s new term! Today we’re welcoming 100+ new first year students in art history, and 23 members of our new class of MAs in Cultural Policy also. Lots of folks have been enquiring about our new part-time MA option at UCD, so do feel free to get in contact with me or our course director Pat Cooke if you’d like more details.

Jobs have just been updated — several senior roles are currently advertised, including Directors of the Hunt Museum, Crawford Gallery, Queen’s Film Theatre, Dublin Fringe Festival, etc. As always, feel free to send on any listings and I will post them as soon as possible.

I’ll be posting more event updates etc. in my next dispatch — but if you’re grousing for cultural policy news, two items for your perusal:

• Here’s the latest update (July 2017) on the national cultural policy, Culture 2025 (which doesn’t seem to have been circulated too widely)… a very ambitious document, and no doubt one we’ll be parsing in class over the coming weeks…
• Over the summer the international cultural policy journal Cultural Trends published a special issue on Ireland and Northern Ireland, featuring a great range of new research articles on the Irish cultural sector. I especially recommend the introduction written by editors Victoria Durrer and Kerry McCall — ‘Cultural policymaking and research on the Island of Ireland’ — as well as a new essay I’ve written, ‘Known unknowns: research on Irish museums since 2008‘, which gives a broad overview of museum policy, provision, and the current ‘state of play’ on the island.