Category: Funding

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!

€30,000 NCAD + UCD Seed Funding Call now open

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NCAD + UCD Project website
(featuring work by Avril Corroon: NCAD’s Thomas St arch transported to UCD on graduation day)

I’m very pleased to announce that an internal seed funding call for the NCAD + UCD Strategic Alliance is now open! I’m part of the project management team coordinating a range of activities and initiatives between the two institutions — in particular, heading up the development of a new NCAD + UCD academic research centre in Creative Arts and Critical Cultures. In addition to the Centre, we are also developing a new MA in Interaction Design and an interdisciplinary Summer School, ‘City Life’. Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have, and do share this seed funding call with colleagues and postgraduate students at NCAD or UCD.

Project & Seed Funding Call – Creative Arts and Critical Cultures

Deadline: 16 March 2015
Contact: Amy Smith, NCAD + UCD Project Coordinator (amy.smith@ucd.ie) / Dr Emily Mark-FitzGerald, NCAD + UCD : Creative Arts & Critical Cultures (emily.mark@ucd.ie)

Supported by the Higher Education Authority of Ireland, the NCAD + UCD venture aims to identify, examine and develop the potential practical and operational synergies resulting from closer ties between the two institutions. The venture encompasses teaching projects, research initiatives, and cross-institutional programmes and events, with a view to deepening the relationship between NCAD and UCD.

We are happy to announce a Seed Funding Call which seeks to encourage closer collaboration and support the establishment of a new shared NCAD + UCD academic research centre in Creative Arts and Critical Cultures. The funding scheme will provide support for projects that are ambitious and innovative and that will lead to new knowledge and capacities. It offers staff and postgraduate students the opportunity to apply for internal funding to enhance existing and future activities.

This competitively-awarded funding is open to staff and registered postgraduate students of UCD and NCAD, in any department and discipline. Funding will be awarded to projects that involve interdisciplinary collaborations, and promote cross-overs between artistic activity, cultural production and intellectual engagement. A maximum of €5,000 will be awarded to any one project (smaller applications are also encouraged). A total fund of €30,000 has been made available.

For full details of the scheme, and the online application form, please see:
http://ncad-ucd.ie/funding/

1 week to go! Arts management & policy conference, 25 June (UCD)

UCD Student Centre
FItzGerald Debating Chamber – Conference Location
Pool & Dance Studio
Black Box theatre
Cinema

We’re getting very excited about hosting next week’s conference ‘Mapping an Altered Landscape: cultural policy and management in Ireland‘ next Wednesday (25 June 2014) in UCD’s beautiful new student centre. Co-sponsored by IADT, the conference is supported by the Arts Council and Heritage Council. The one-day conference features a great line-up of speakers reflecting in an open format on current cultural policies and management practices.

Our main aim of the day is to propose solutions to a problem that perplexes us all: what might a coherent cultural policy look like?

The last cultural policy conference held at UCD was held in 2008 — right before the economic crash — and there’s no better time than the present to take a hard look at what’s changed in the interim, and talk openly about the way forward.

Our capacity is limited, with 100+ confirmed attendees from across the artforms and cultural sector (artists, arts managers, curators, theatre-makers, museum/heritage folks, local authority officers, representatives from the Department, Arts and Heritage Councils, government ministers, students and academics), so please register soon if you’d like to join us on the day! Speaker presentations will be diverse and brief to allow for maximum audience participation.

There will also be the opportunity to tour UCD’s new cultural facilities — still unknown to lots of folks, and open for programming and collaborations — including our state-of-the art cinema, black box theatre, dance studio and radio station. An optional screening of the documentary ‘Skin in the Game‘ (on Irish artists & the recession) will be held that evening after the conclusion of the conference in the new cinema.

I hope very much that many of you will be able to join us!

‘Mapping’ 2014 Conference schedule

www.culturalpolicyconference2014.ie

 

Happy new year! Weathering the storms…

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Well, the recycling bins are overflowing, the tree disposal centres are looking a bit sad, but at least the storm clouds finally seem to be breaking… although perhaps not over Limerick, quite yet (oh dear…)

After a very quiet semester on the blogging front, I’ll be back with regular updates in the coming weeks, and of course, regular job postings and event announcements.

2013 was quite the rollercoaster for the arts & cultural community — we’ve had a nasty budget with bodies like Culture Ireland and National Cultural Institutions especially hard-hit; the spectacular collapse of Temple Bar Cultural Trust and the closure of the Belltable Arts Centre in Limerick (and worrying times for the Irish Architectural Archives too); campaigns highlighting the precarious position of visual artists and compensation and the need for cultural research and better policy-making processes; controversies over corporate arts sponsorships and the Arts Council Music Recording Scheme bursaries.

Amidst the gossip and gloom there have been many bright spots as well — a very successful run by Derry as City of Culture; Rough Magic and Opera Theatre Company’s fab win in the Sky Arts Ignition competition; booming times for Culture Night nationwide;The Gathering (despite its rocky start) now being hailed as a great success. In our own neck of the woods here at UCD, we launched the new Irish Journal of Arts Management and Cultural Policy and are looking ahead to issue 2 very soon.

What’s in store for 2014? The fallout from the Limerick City of Culture debacle is set to continue (though a new CEO has just been announced) — and in many ways it serves as an apt distillation of the challenges ahead. The bungled initiative has thrown into painful (and public) relief what we already know: the dominant rhetoric of corporate ‘rebranding’ and clashing conceptions of what a ‘city of culture’ is actually meant to deliver; public ‘cultural management’ practices which betray no deep understanding of either term; the small, imbalanced budgets now assigned to major arts events with the expectation of high (usually non-arts) returns; and the shockingly poor control of taxpayer-funded initiatives by the government department meant to oversee them.

There’s still time for Limerick to get its act together — and the mass turnout at public meetings and high level of publicity generated over the past few days bodes well for Limerick CoC. This matters deeply to many people, in Limerick and nationwide. However the issues underlying CoC that have fuelled this crisis have been with us for some time – and they aren’t going away. I’m looking forward to lots of discussions and debates over the coming months over how we can improve relationships between cultural policy, art practice and public funding, across all of the artform sectors. One of the benefits of working in a university is the boundless energy and enthusiasm for change and opportunity in the arts which floods through our doors every year. And as we enter into a new year, I’m taking a page from their book: perhaps we all need to adopt Woody Guthrie’s final New Year’s resolution (from his list that’s been making the rounds): Wake Up and Fight.