Category: Event announcements

Thinking about doing an MA in Arts Management this autumn?

Tomorrow (22 July) we’re offering an hour-long webinar for anyone interested in pursuing the MA in Arts Management & Cultural Policy here with us at University College Dublin!

It’ll be hosted by our course director Dr Annette Clancy, who will be joined by course lecturer Dr Victoria Durrer, as well as a current student in the programme (Jenny Hartnett, who recently completed her placement with Dublin City Council) and a recent alum (Richie O’Sullivan, General Manager for the Irish Theatre Institute).

Our MA is the oldest and largest programme on the island of Ireland — established in 1986, today we’ve more than 770 graduates now working all over the world! All are welcome to hear more about the programme — its structure and the opportunities it opens — with registration through Eventbrite 🙂

Happy 2017! 50+ new Irish arts jobs/internships listed

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Here’s to a brighter 2017…

Happy new year to all of my readers! In what must be a record, I’ve just added more than fifty new posts to the jobs page — looks like recruitment in 2017 is on the rise again, which is good news for organisations and jobseekers. Tons of plum roles across artforms, including senior posts at the National Gallery, NCAD, Royal Irish Academy, Galway 2020, EVA International — and plenty of mid- and entry-level posts across the country too. More than 4,000 subscribers get notifications from this blog, so do keep sending in any openings you’d like listed (it’s always free, and I update bi-weekly in general).

Other arts and cultural news that may be of interest:

The Arts Council’s conference on local government & the arts – Places Matter – is taking place tomorrow (12 January) at Dublin Castle (I’ll be there, come say hello!). Unfortunately it’s booked out, but it’s been announced the conference will be live streamed.

Gotta dance?? Dublin Dance Festival is looking for all and any to help perform one of the most famous dance sequences ever produced – Pina Bausch’s ‘Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter’ from her 1982 piece NELKEN. Instructions for filming & uploading your version are on its website: DDF played a blinder last year (for my money, it had the highest hit rate of any arts festival) and this looks to be a great opener.

Business to Arts has just announced the first round of recruitment for its Fundraising Fellowships, with Helium Arts and Fishamble. These posts (the first 2 of 4) will offer training and mentorship in addition to salaried posts — great opportunities all!

Maria Balshaw has been appointed as new Director of the Tate, replacing Nick Serota. Maria has directed the Whitworth and Manchester Art Gallery for the last decade, and spearheaded Manchester’s cultural revival to great acclaim; she also recently delivered the Irish Museums Association’s James White annual lecture.

The Irish Museums Association’s annual conference is 3 and 4 March, on the subject of cultural tourism – time to get booking! In positive funding news, the annual grant to the IMA from the Department was recently raised to its former level – cause for celebration for this vital support organisation that delivers a huge programme on a tiny budget.

In case you missed it before Christmas, the government launched Creative Ireland 2017-22, the follow-up legacy programme of the 2016 Centenary. It’s a very sophisticated mix of declaration and aspiration, fuelling hopes that its various initiatives will be matched with adequate resourcing. If it’s realised, it’ll be brilliant and the most expansive acknowledgment of the diversity (and importance) of arts and culture we’ve ever had as a nation. However, as with most cultural plans, we will have to wait and see whether actual investment follows the splashy launch.

Arts jobs, events, and publication announcements

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Places Matter – The Umbrella Project by Rhona Byrne, commissioned by Fire Station Artists’ Studios and supported by Dublin City Council

Like most scholars of memory & Irish history on this island, I’m wiped – 2016 has been a crazy busy year due to centenary-related events (nine conference papers/presentations since Sept, plus an exhibition opening!) Apologies for the relative blog silence as consequence.

A few updates, in any event:

Jobs have recently been refreshed — lots of great ones in there: CEO for the Irish Baroque Orchestra; General Manager of Macnas; Collections Registrar for the National Trust NI; Heritage Officer for Westmeath Co. Council; etc.

Registrations are now being taken for Places Matter: what happens when we invest in the arts? on 12 January 2017, Dublin Castle, a one-day conference on local arts engagement organised by the Arts Council of Ireland in collaboration with Local Government. The speaker list looks very interesting (esp. keynote by Geoffrey Crossick), and I’m looking forward to seeing Emmett Kirwan in a new setting!

The Irish Museums Association’s Annual Lecture is next week (28 November) and this year features Diane Lees, Director-General of the Imperial War Museums. The lecture will be taking place in the special surroundings of the newly renovated Courthouse at Kilmainham Gaol. Tickets are only €5 and this lecture regularly books out, so do register to avoid disappointment.

Next week will also see the launch of two big projects, long in development:

  • The Irish Museums Survey 2016, the first major survey of Irish museums in more than a decade, will be launched at the National Library of Ireland on 30 November by Minister Heather Humphreys. I was the Principal Investigator on this project, which was funded by the Irish Research Council and executed in collaboration with the Irish Museums Association. I’ll be publishing a separate post after the launch, detailing some of our key findings, which will be of interest to anyone working in the heritage or museum sector on the island!
  • We’re very pleased as a School to announce the publication of After Francoise Henry: 50 Years of Art History at UCD (1965 – 2016), part of our current anniversary celebrations. arthistorybookIt features scholarly contributions from members of the staff, past and present. The book will be launched on Thursday, and will be available soon for purchase.

Museum of August Destiny comes to Pearse Museum

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Launch of The Museum of August Destiny
Thursday 3 November, 5 pm
Pearse Museum, St Enda’s, Rathfarnham

I’m delighted to share news that the contemporary art exhibition I curated this summer at Lismore Castle Arts – The Museum of August Destiny – will have a second showing at the Pearse Museum, St. Enda’s, Rathfarnham, from 4 November 2016 – 8 January 2017.

Featuring artists Aideen Barry, Mark Clare, Amanda Coogan, Anthony Haughey, Dragana Jurisic, and Sarah Pierce, the six new commissioned works offer reflections on the Irish state and the ‘august destiny’ envisioned by the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.

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The exhibition will be launched on 3 November (5 pm) by Professor Sarah Prescott, Principal, UCD College of Arts and Humanities, and on view from 4 November 2016 – 8 January 2017. Admission is free.

Supported by the UCD Decade of Centenaries programme
Initiated & first displayed by Lismore Castle Arts, Co. Waterford
With thanks to the Pearse Museum, Office of Public Works

Autumn 2016 in Dublin: an arts/cultural primer

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drawsoc

Apart from all the events on in city centre, don’t forget Drawsoc, UCD’s award-winning visual arts society! Lots of events planned on campus for the first weeks of term…

Today we welcomed our new class of MAs in Arts Management and Cultural Policy here at UCD! We’ve another group of diverse and ambitious folks keen to get stuck into study, but also to explore all of the cultural delights of the city 🙂 As promised, here’s a roundup of some highlights in the cultural calendar during the next two months. For folks new to Dublin, you couldn’t land at a better time!

Culture Night (Friday, 16 September) – the city will be taken over this Friday with Culture Night, with a massive number arts and cultural events happening around the country (and in NI) as well. My tips: start early, bring your walking shoes, plan your itinerary in advance (queues can be long for the popular venues!), and enjoy the liveliest night of the year in town… it’s not an exaggeration to say that most of city centre is given over to culture vultures.

Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival (10-25 September) – it’s on, it’s sprawling, it’s hot, it’s crazy. Fringe has already kicked off the autumn arts glut with a smashing programme this year… top venues include the Spiegeltent (in Merrion Square for the first time this year!) You’ve 73 productions and 412 performances to choose from (and here are the recs from the Irish Times), but my money’s on RIOT from Thisisopopbaby (co-produced by MA alumna Jenny Jennings) and Paul Currie’s surreal Release the Baboons.

Dublin Theatre Festival (29 Sept. – 16 October 2016) – this is the big one: theatres across town will be stuffed to the gills with the offerings in this year’s festival, with top-notch international and domestic productions a-plenty, and very reasonable ticket prices. I’ve got my eye on Backstage in Biscuit Land and the new staging of a Midsummer Night’s Dream in particular.

Open House Dublin (14-16 October 2016) – for the architecture buffs amongst us, this annual mainstay offers 100+ tours of iconic Dublin buildings and little-seen interiors. A fab way to poke your nose in some astonishing and striking buildings sprinkled all over the greater Dublin area.

Project Arts Centre – Project 50 Season (from October) – the beloved Project Arts Centre (one of the country’s main multidisciplinary venues) is blowing out 50 candles on its cake this year, and to celebrate they’ve programmed a special season of work. Shows at Project are reliably excellent and provocative, under the steady hand of director Cian O’Brian (a graduate of our course, btw).

Ireland 2016 / Decade of Commemorations  – over the past year the events calendar has been stuffed with commemorative events of all shades and stripes; there’s still time to catch a number of fantastic arts events over the next few months:

  • Composing the Island: a century of music in Ireland, 1916-2016, National Concert Hall (7-25 September) – for the music buffs, catch any one of a series of 29 concerts — orchestral, choral, instrumental, song and chamber music — by Irish composers written between 1916 and 2016.
  • In the Shadow of the State – The Touching Contract, Sarah Browne and Jesse Jones, the Rotunda (23-25 September) – get booking NOW for this — one of the commissioned centenary works created by artists Browne and Jones, this is an immersive performance work staged in the Rotunda Hospital reflecting on women’s bodies and the state.
  • These Rooms – Anu Productions & CoisCĂ©im Dance Theatre (27 Sept. – 16 Oct.) – another immersive live performance, from the renowned site specific theatre-makers Anu and the highly regarded CoisCĂ©im, revisiting the Rising from the perspective of civilians on North King Street caught in the cross-hairs.
  • Butterflies and Bones: The Casement Project (20-22 October) – Perhaps no figure better encapsulates the conflicts and contradictions of 1916 and its legacy than Roger Casement. Dancer Fearghus Ă“ ConchĂşir has been producing a stunning series of events reflecting on Casement’s human rights activism, revolutionary aspirations, his sexuality, trial and conflicted legacy – an unmissable final instalment.

Phew. I love Dublin in the autumn!