Category: Event announcements

Weekly round-up: 2 February 2012

Michael Seaver’s written an excellent piece on 2011’s contemporary dance highlights in Irish Theatre Magazine; really whets the appetite to see more dance in 2012!

This morning Pat Wallace (Director of the National Museum) featured in an article in the Irish Times and an appearance on radio with Pat Kenny, voicing his displeasure at being ‘almost forced out’ of his position by the public sector retirement scheme. Whether Wallace would leave the Museum this spring has been the source of some speculation; news of his retirement confirms there will be a (much-needed) change of leadership after many years.

Details of the Ray Murphy Bursary were announced, which offers generous support for MA/PhD work in social finance and philanthropy (in addition to a fee waiver valid at most Irish universities, including UCD!) This is a fantastic (and rare) opportunity if you’ve ever considered pursuing a higher research degree in the subject. Deadline for applications is 20 April.

Visual Arts Ireland is hosting a meeting on 15 February with the National Campaign for the Arts to explore how the visual arts sector can participate in the NCFA’s upcoming efforts; the agenda and registration details are available online.

A post on the Guardian’s Cultural Professionals Network discussed why academia and the arts should collaborate more often. Although it focused pretty much exclusively on funding universities can provide, the research, teaching, and personnel resources (both from scholars and students) at unis offer an equally attractive reason to work together!

The Guardian also reported yesterday on the Prado’s discovery of a contemporaneous copy of the Mona Lisa, an unusual find that will shed new light on the iconic painting.

You may recall Business to Arts’ recent briefing on the Sky Arts Futures scheme, which is offering five young artists a £30,000 bursary. The deadline’s coming up (24 February), and it’s open to Irish entrants!

The Arts Council celebrated its 60th anniversary with an audience with President Michael D Higgins today; details of recipients of €740,000 in grants for touring and dissemination were also recently announced.

The Science Gallery’s new exhibition ‘Edible’ opens on the 10th of February; as usual the accompanying talks and workshops look fab!

Finally, if you’re looking for something to do with your honey on Valentine’s Day, check out Temple Bar Cultural Trust’s ‘Date with Dublin’ — fantastic free and affordable date ideas in collaboration with cultural organisations across the city; download details here!

Weekly round-up: 20 January 2012

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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.

Weekly round-up: 10 January 2012

One day left for applications to be Curator of the Venice Architectural Biennale!

A few bits and pieces for the first round-up of the new year:

In case you missed it in December, the Arts Council has finally released details of a new policy on opera — hopefully this will go some way towards mitigating the disastrous handling of the sector to date by the Council and the Department.

Bob Collins was announced in late December as the new Chair of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Thinking of going freelance in the new year? The Guardian Culture Professionals blog had a few good tips…

Applications are open for the Irish Curator of the Venice Architectural Biennale 2012 (but only until tomorrow, January 12!)

As of January 1st, the Artist Resale Right in Ireland was extended to heirs of artists (and not just living ones). The Irish Times provided a brief summary of the benefits artists & their descendants are now entitled to, with more info available from the Irish Visual Artists Rights Organisation (IVARO, which incidentally came to life as a project by several of our MA students some years ago!)

The Science Gallery’s flagship exhibition for 2012 ‘Hack the City‘ is currently accepting proposals for: ‘Installations, Mass-participation experiments, Events, Performances, New products/services/start-ups, Workshops, Apps, Visualizations, maps and mashups’. Funding is available and proposals are due by 20 January.

Black Church Print Studio has an intriguing-sounding exhibition coming up, especially for an ex-pat Angelena like me:  ‘From Dublin to LA and Back’, an exchange between BCPS and the LA Printmaking Society will be on show at Monster Truck Gallery in Temple Bar from 12-28 January.

Laurence Mackin provided a very useful summary of arts funding and training schemes open for 2012 (covering both North and South). In a similar vein, Community Action Forum (NI) recently compiled a great list of small grants available to community groups seeking project funding.

An interesting editorial on challenges for arts policy was published in the IT on 29 December.

One of the best pieces of arts policy journalism I’ve read in a major daily for some time was David Edgar in last week’s Guardian, musing on ‘Why Should We Fund the Arts‘?

Can you tell the difference between a Stradivarius and a newer violin? A fun test and report on new research from NPR…

A little over 20 days until applications close for World Book Night 2012! I gave away loads of free copies of Beloved last year, it was great fun! Sign up to be a giver on their website…

The PhotoIreland Festival has announced its theme for this July’s festival, and it’s just up my street: ‘Migrations: Diaspora & Cultural Identity’.

Weekly round-up: 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.

Weekly update: 10 October 2011

The new WorldIrish.com site, one of the diaspora initiatives launched last week

Feedback on the arts/culture dimension of the recent Global Irish Economic Forum at Dublin Castle has been buzzing since  Saturday, with a subsequent article in the IT on corporate sponsorship & the arts (also predated last week by an article on foreign bank subsidizing of recent arts activity). I admit to some scepticism regarding the notion of a mass ‘homecoming’ event (will there be cheerleaders & tailgates?), but it was heartening to see the cultural agenda as a central part of the discussions. (on a side note, it’s a pity that the live feed of the event hasn’t been archived!!)

More than 350 people have signed the petition launched by IVARO to urge full implementation of the Artists’ Resale Right (as it currently can be availed of by living artists, the petition seeks for the resale rights to extend to deceased artists whose work is still in copyright, thus bringing Ireland in line with EU conventions). Consider clicking through the link & adding your name in support??

To coincide with Dublin Contemporary, Noone Casey are offering a mentorship award worth €10k of sponsorship, financial & strategic planning advice to an emerging arts collective, organisation, etc. (the brief is pretty open!) Deadline is 12th of October.

The Arts Council has recently announced its list of new artform advisers — the folks tasked with viewing & visiting shows/exhibitions/etc. across the country, and assisting with funding applications and grantmaking decisions.

Calling all arts marketers: Una Carmody, director of the Arts Audiences project, is seeking feedback from marketers with respect to the Target Group Index Report (to be released this month)… quite a lot of relevant information and data about arts participation is contained in this report, and Una & co are taking requests for report analysis.

We’ve entered the final week of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival… My own viewings have been mixed, from the great (Rian) to the meh (Peer Gynt), but bookings have been very solid and it’s been difficult to source tickets for many shows. The box office has been releasing 10 euro rush tickets the same day as some performances, so it’s worth keeping an eye on their twitter feed or facebook page to snag a deal! (a few interesting and provocative write-ups in the Guardian and Saturday Irish Times, as well)

The annual architectural bonanza known as Open House Dublin began last weekend; if the queues at sites in our neighborhood were representative at all, it’s been a busy launch! So many great programmes and events along with the architectural tours, it’s a must-see.

One helluva white elephant: following accusations of mismanagement the €44 million Niemeyer arts centre in Spain is set to close after opening only 6 months ago. One of our current PhD students in the department is likewise investigating the effects of ‘starchitecture’ in the Rioja region; it would seem the ‘Bilbao effect’ is not all it’s been cracked up to be…

The UK think-tank Demos have recently released a report into the creative industries sector entitled ‘Risky Business‘, suggesting that creative business have proven to be lower-risk than non-creative/cultural ventures, and calling for greater levels of government attention to fostering their growth.

Following its enormously successful application call for its BA in Acting in 2011, the new Lir (Nat Academy for the Performing Arts) has announced it’s accepting applications for its BA In Acting 2012 / Diploma in Stage Management and Technical Theatre 2012.

We knew it was coming, but, alas, IMMA will be closing its main building for refurbishment on 1 November until December 2012. What a buzzkill for all the enthusiasm generated by Dub Contemp 😦 😦

Booking has opened for the International Puppet Festival in the south county Dublin & Wicklow area… a series of free street events will also be taking place in Temple Bar, Bray and Dun Laoghaire on the 23rd of October– it looks like a great programme!

…and if you live in South Dublin, take a moment to complete a public survey on usage of its library systems.

It’s still a few weeks away (9 November), but consider booking in for the Irish Museum Association’s annual lecture — this year featuring Dr Penelope Curtis, Director of the Tate Britain — the tickets generally get snapped up!