Category: festivals

News (and new jobs) for a new trimester!

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The blog is back after a bit of a hiatus last year!

Yesterday we began a new trimester at UCD, and I’ve just begun my new role as Head of the School of Art History and Cultural Policy. After 16 years with the School they’ve finally put me in charge of the place 😉

It’s been a crazy busy last few months as we’ve expanded our staff (with more announcements to come very soon!), and wrapped up the first year of our new MA in Art History: Collections and Curating, as well as another year of the MA in Cultural Policy and Arts Management. I’ll be doing my best to keep this site up to date (thanks to some new admin help) – especially the ever-popular jobs & careers page, which has just been updated with lots of new roles. I’m currently accepting new postings again, so feel free to email them to me.

A few recent developments and upcoming events to highlight:

We were delighted to welcome Dr Annette Clancy as a new Assistant Professor in our School last semester; Annette will be particularly contributing to our MA in Cultural Policy and Arts Management, focusing on teaching arts management and pursuing her own research on organisational structures and behaviour.

This year we’ve a brilliant and international MA cohort in our School: thirty-one new MA Cultural Policy students (the biggest class in a decade), and twelve in the MA Art History. Looking forward to beginning teaching this week, and getting to know all our new folks.

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Prof. Colin Scott (Principal, College of Social Sciences and Law); Assoc. Prof Nicola Figgis (outgoing Head of School of Art History and Cultural Policy); UCD President Andrew Deeks; Dr Catherine Marshall; Prof. Kathleen James-Chakraborty; Assoc. Prof Emily Mark-FitzGerald (incoming Head)

Last Thursday we were honoured to confer an honorary doctorate on founding IMMA Head of Collections and wide-ranging curator and scholar Catherine Marshall. Catherine’s contributions to the discipline of art history are immense, and it was a wonderful occasion celebrating her scholarship and generosity to the arts over many decade.

Dublin Fringe Festival’s now in full swing! Gotta give a shout out to a few current students, colleagues and alumni keeping busy at this year’s Fringe:

  • THISISPOPBABY is supporting a whole range of shows & artists (their POPbasers and POPbabies) – not to mention offering up a pretty sweet picks of the Fringe guide
  • Current MA student Mollie Molumby is producing Alison Spittle’s new play Starlet – a fiercely talented duo!
  • Brokentalkers’ The Examination has returned to Dublin after a run at the Edinburgh Fringe, and it’s been picking up superb notices – it’s a collaboration with our School of History colleague Dr Catherine Cox, drawing on her research into prisons and mental health

Dublin Theatre Festival is headed our way too in late September – we’re especially pleased to be welcoming its Director Willie White as a contributor to one of our core Cultural Policy modules this semester (hat tip also to Richie O’Sullivan, one of our MA grads who recently started a new role as DTF’s Festival Administrator).

Culture Night (Friday 20 September) is also on the horizon: it gets bigger every year, and there’s a nice write-up of it in today’s Irish Times, featuring an interview with its coordinator Aimee von Wylick (another of our MA grads!)

Unfortunately all is not well for Dublin and culture: the bad news landed yesterday evening that beloved artsy pub and cultural innovator The Bernard Shaw is set to close. It’s the latest victim in Dublin’s relentless purge of many of its arts spaces and small creative enterprises in the wake of rising property prices and gentrification (the Dublin Flea is another recent casualty). The Bernard Shaw was an indie beacon of experimentation and optimism during the lows of the recession, and it’s a terrible shame to see it go. It’s clear urgent action is needed by the Council to ensure Dublin’s cultural core isn’t hollowed out, and that creative space (studios and venues especially) aren’t squeezed out of our city centre.

I’m proud to be a board member of Arts & Disability Ireland, and we have a MAJOR event coming to Dublin from 11-14 May 2020, produced in collaboration with the John F Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts / Very Special Arts in Washington DC – From Access to Inclusion 2020: An Arts & Culture Summit. Our call for proposals is now open, with lots of opportunity to get involved. This will be the biggest arts & disability event ever held on the island, and the ADI team is absolutely brilliant. One to pop in the diary!

The first all-island dance conference Co-Motion is taking place from 25-26 October in Belfast, with a great looking programme centred on the artist-as-citizen.

I’m co-organising a special session at the American Conference of Irish Studies in Houston TX in April 2020, focused on the intersection between visual culture and Irish Studies! We especially welcome PhDs and ECRS; see all the details here for how to submit.

The Irish Journal of Arts Management & Cultural Policy is accepting submissions and proposals for its 2019-20 issue. Contributions are welcome from scholars, students, and arts practitioners to feature in its online publication.

Finally – if you’re keen to undertake a PhD with our School in Art History or Arts Management/Cultural Policy: the primary source of funding (the Irish Research Council Postgrad Scholarship Programme) has just opened. Deadline is 31 October, but come speak with us first if you’re interested – we have lots of support for potential applicants here at UCD. I also encourage anyone interested to download my personal guide Thinking of Undertaking a PhD that has loads of helpful info and advice.

Phew! Onwards and upwards, y’all.

 

 

 

 

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.

Autumn 2016 in Dublin: an arts/cultural primer

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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 & CoisCéim Dance Theatre (27 Sept. – 16 Oct.) – another immersive live performance, from the renowned site specific theatre-makers Anu and the highly regarded CoisCéim, 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 Ó Conchúir 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!

 

 

Bumper crop of arts jobs & other news

Some of our MA in Arts Management & Cultural Policy students from UCD attending the Irish Museums Association event in Belfast

Some of our MA in Arts Management & Cultural Policy students from UCD, attending the Irish Museums Association event in Belfast

Just finished another update to the jobs page – whoa mama, there’s a lot on offer at the moment! Happy hunting…

A few other bits and pieces from this week:

Thanks to everyone who came along to the Irish Museums Association event in Belfast at the weekend, and especially to our wonderful speakers sharing their experience of creative collaborations with museums (slides will be posted soon!) Our next big event is the annual lecture on 11 November at the NGI, where we will welcome Sir Christopher Frayling, former Chair of the Arts Council England and the Design Council (UK), former trustee of the V&A, governor of the British Film Institute — you won’t want to miss it! Tickets are free but *must* be booked in advance (and our lectures usually book out!)

The Arts Council of Ireland recently announced its 10-year strategy Making Great Art Work – Leading the development of the arts in Ireland — and are inviting responses to the strategy, as well as hosting a series of fora nationwide from late October – November (registration required).

Arts Audiences’ Focus on Audiences – Digital Day 2015 event will take place on 17 December at Dublin Castle — an essential event if you’ve an interest in development, marketing, etc!

I’m intrigued by the Light Moves festival in Limerick (18-22nd November) that explores screendance and dance on film… such an unusual and engaging programme.

Limerick seems to be quite the busy place next month: on 19 November the Hunt Museum will host a symposium on Digital History, focusing on interactivity in heritage sites and museums.

The Abbey Theatre launched details of its 2016 programme yesterday, Waking the Nation – it looks to be a strong programme, although protests on twitter about about the lack of female playwrights seem justified… something to discuss perhaps in the new Peacock cafe just opened there too…

On 5 November we’re very pleased here at UCD to host a performance by Artist-in-Residence Dominic Thorpe, entitled Disjunction, based on work he’s been doing over the past year as part of UCD’s highly successful artist-in-res programme.

I’m delighted to be involved in the lecture series accompanying the National Gallery of Ireland’s upcoming exhibition The Pathos of Distance, a collaboration with the artist Sarah Pierce, exploring images of Irish immigration and diaspora. Lots of great info and images are now appearing on the NGI’s blog to accompany the exhibition which opens in December…

Finally — if you’re interested in arts fundraising and development — hope you’re following Jeremy Hatch (The Artful Fundraiser) — I just love his candid, funny (and highly knowledgeable!) blog posts on the ins and outs of arts development…

Arts news round-up: 19 October 2015

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A few bits and pieces for your Monday…

Last call! We’ve more than 70 signed up for ‘The Creative Museum: Extending Participation Through Collaboration’ this Friday/Saturday at Queen’s University Belfast; a few extra tickets have been released through the link above, and there are some additional seats on the (free!) Dublin-Belfast bus taking folks up & returning on Saturday. It’s going to be a great day — many thanks to the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht for their sponsorship of this event.

Always love seeing arts organisations venturing into new territory, and the Royal Hibernian Academy’s been leading the way on this one: their Blue Moon Lost Wednesdays events have been fab mixes of music, food and art — and their inaugural Interlude festival this weekend looks promising, with a live music room, club space, cabaret cinema, cocktail club, craft beer bar, vinyl room and pop-up restaurant!

Congratulations to my colleagues Victoria Durrer (QUB) and Kerry McCall (IADT) on the imminent launch of the Cultural Policy Research Observatory Ireland, a new network and resource for Irish academics (north and south) engaged in cultural policy research, across disciplines. Seed funded by the Irish Research Council, its inaugural event (by invitation) is taking place this Thursday, 22 October at QUB on the subject of The Production of Our Contemporary Livelihood. More great things are to come!

The details of Budget 2016 were announced last week; however the rather cheerful press release from the Department was quickly countered with more negative assessments from the National Campaign for the Arts and Theatre Forum. Both correctly highlight that most of the significant new funding allocations are devoted only to impending commemorations: core funding is only being increased by €4.5 million, a very disappointing sum given the substantial cuts to the arts & culture budgets since 2008. The Department has further indicated a ‘boost in funding for the National Cultural Institutions and the Arts Council’, but few details of what this constitutes are yet available (excepting a €2.5 million increase for the AC, but the wording suggests this may be a one-off). There’s no two ways about it: funding for the centenary is eclipsing investment into core arts and cultural funding. This is very problematic, especially for any and all activity falling outside that narrow categorization. I’m feeling a 2016 hangover coming on already…

Applications for the 2016 Government of Ireland postdoctoral scholarships are now being accepted. This is the primary means by which arts & humanities postdoc work is funded at Irish universities; if you’ve a PhD and would like to come speak with us about postdoc opportunities, feel free to get in touch!

Along with colleagues at Maynooth University and the International Network of Irish Famine Studies, I’m co-organising a conference on The Great Famine and its Impacts: Visual and Material Culture (14-16 March). Our call for papers has just been announced; we’ll be producing an edited volume, and have planned several special events in conjunction with the conference, so do consider sending in an abstract if you work in this field…

On 29 October I’ll be participating in the symposium Talking About Perpetrators, a cross-disciplinary event taking place in Dublin Castle and co-organised by College of Arts & Humanities Artist-in-Residence Dominic Thorpe, and Dr Emilie Pine from UCD School of English, Drama & Film. Tickets are very limited, so do book asap if you wish to attend!