Category: Funding

Weekly round-up: 12 December 2011

South Dublin County Council's new public art site

The big news last week was of course the budget… the National Campaign for the Arts and Laurence Mackin of the IT have provided the details of cuts to the budget (and full details are available from the Department)… a few key points:

  • Gross funding in 2012 for the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht will be €267 million (plus an extra €8.6 million in funding for the National Gallery.) Note that it’s not possible to assess, strictly speaking, how this compares with previous years, due to the shifts in department make-up.
  • However, overall 49% of the department’s budget (€129.6 million) is being allocated in 2012 to Arts, Culture and Film programme areas. Arts current funding is down 6%: from €124 million to €117 million.
  • The Arts Council is down 3.2%, from €65.16 to €63.1 million.
  • Arts capital funding is the most severely hit — down 34% from €32 million to €21 million. Most of this (13.2 million) is allocated to the Irish Film Board, and constitutes their annual funding (despite the ‘capital’ label)- although their funding is down overall by 14.9%.
  • Culture Ireland will be down 11%.
  • How did the national institutions fare? National Archives (-5%); IMMA, CBL, NCH and the Crawford (-4%); NMI (-5%); NLI (-7%). However these figures don’t count huge drops in capital budgets, which will severely affect the national institutions’ plans for developing infrastructure and other crucial projects.

Although the overall funding picture appears to be better than expected, the national institutions will be hard hit, and there will be other financial implications from ancillary budget measures for arts organisations (the increase in VAT, for example, as well as the decrease in CE funding which many organisations rely upon).

In other news…the Arts Council has announced its 2012 project grant recipients — an interesting look at work which lies ahead!

The new director of the National Gallery was finally announced — and it’s Sean Rainbird, current Director of the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, who also worked for many years at the Tate. Word has it that current staff are delighted with the appointment — I think it will be a much-needed breath of fresh air into the gallery, and look forward to his tenure!

South Dublin County Council has unveiled a new public art website — searchable and snazzy — and very useful for students of public art projects.

Fintan O’Toole has blasted the Abbey’s latest production of The Government Inspector, and decried (again) what he perceives is the national theatre’s failure to actively engage with the current breakdown of Irish society.

The Music Generation programme is being expanded to Laois, Wicklow and Cork City — no doubt news of new opportunities will soon follow…

The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival has announced its call for volunteers.

An interesting article in the Guardian (‘Should the arts be more selective about sponsors?‘) canvassed reactions to the withdrawal of two poets from the TS Eliot prize competition over their objections to the award’s sponsorship by a hedge fund.

I’m really digging all the posts at the Guardian’s Culture Professional Network blog… tons of interesting and useful posts there to anyone working in the field.

Not strictly arts-related, but if you are a researcher check out the new British Newspaper Archive project from the British Library (lovingly reviewed by the fantastic Bioscope blog) — it’s gonna rock your world.

And finally… congrats to our fantastic 2011 class of Arts Management & Cultural Policy MA graduates! It was wonderful to see them in the glad rags last week at commencement 🙂 🙂

Hope everyone is enjoying all of the holiday activities across town — such a busy time of year!

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 round-up: 15 August 2011

New LUAS Heritage posters

Time ran away before I could post on Friday, so here’s a a week’s worth of artscultury goodness for your Monday reading pleasure:

The Kilkenny Festival has wrapped up, but ah, the memories… highlights for me included the artist talk sponsored by Josephine Kelliher of the Rubicon Gallery, the amazing video installation by Jacco Olivier, the quirky and playful show by Ian Burns (still on!) at the Butler Gallery, and Angela O’Kelly’s curated show ‘Modified Expression’ at the National Craft Gallery of delicately crafted paper objects — simply delightful.

Go Karl! A former office-mate of mine from the Humanities Institute of Ireland here at UCD has taken the initiative to develop a series of historical community posters, now adorning a LUAS stop near you (you can see all the posters here). A great heritage initiative that’s very common in other European cities, it’s a wonderful way to share stories and images from archives with the public.

Cork was feeling the love in the Irish Times at the weekend, with a big article on the rebel county’s blossoming arts scene… lots of familiar faces there!

In today’s Irish Times, Michael Dervan pens a hugely depressing account of the failure of the Arts Council or the Department of Arts, Heritage & the Gaeltacht to support Irish opera… a situation which shows no signs of forthcoming improvement.

The Department has also recently published a review of the Irish Heritage Trust, set up in 2006 to help preserve the Big House in Ireland and presumably acquire important properties, but which to date has only managed to conserve and re-present Fota House in Cork. The report is fairly negative about the value elicited thus far from the Trust, and seems to suggest an absorption of its functions into the existing bodies An Taisce, the Irish Georgian Society or the Irish Landmark Trust.

Planning a project with another European arts organisation? No? Well, you should be, cause the European Cultural Foundation has money to give ya! Deadline is Sept. 1st, and this fund tends to be underutilised by Irish arts orgs, so get creative!

Or how about if you have a project taking place within 1 km of the Aviva Stadium (Lansdowne Road!) in Dublin? There’s more funding up for grabs for community, arts & cultural projects…

News of the Dublin Contemporary’s preview dates & launch hit last week, and more details are coming all the time… next month’s Visual Artists News Sheet will have a special focus on the DC as well. I’m particularly keen to see the Willie Doherty retrospective coming up at the Hugh Lane.

Ai Wei Wei has spoken briefly about the conditions of his detention by Chinese officials to the New York Times — the censorship he has faced is still so shocking…

Is art being used as the ‘window dressing’ of the recession? Peter Crawley in the IT thinks so, but I disagree… site specific theatre is such a rich dimension of theatrical experience, and certainly responding to our changed physical environment in such direct ways is the very point and purpose of art?

The Cultúrlann building in Derry by architects O’Donnell Tuomey has been shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, considered the ‘Oscars’ of the architecture world… another kudos for the progressive firm who’ve won loads of acclaim for their arts and cultural buildings, including the new Lyric Theatre in Belfast opened in May, and of course the Glucksman Gallery (shortlisted in 2005 for the Stirling).

We knew it was coming, but still… sigh. IMMA’s announced its closure dates of November 2011-January 2013. The New Galleries will still be open and host small scale shows, but it’s going to be a lean year for visitors to our national visual arts institutions.

I had meant to give a heads up on the talk by my colleague Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith at Lismore Castle Arts last Friday on their current exhibition ‘Still Life’. Dangit. Go see the exhibition anyway, I thought it was wonderful!

Finally… no word yet on the new director appointment at the National Gallery, but if the gossip is correct there should be white smoke soon…

Weekly round-up: 28 July 2011

Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival 2011

It’s been a while, but I missed ya. Here’s the latest round-up:

First Thursdays in Temple Bar (where cultural organizations stay open extra late) keeps getting bigger and bigger – check it out next week if you haven’t already!

While I was away the Arts Council appointed Orlaith McBride as its new director… still no white smoke on the new director of the National Gallery, however!

I was very sorry to hear of the passing of artist Bill Crozier — a lovely man and a wonderful artist, I interviewed him a few years ago for a book on Stoney Road Press and recently enjoyed seeing his work at the RHA Annual Exhibition. He was extremely warm, funny and generous and we had a wonderful time speaking about our shared love of jazz, among other things! His work will be a wonderful legacy of a great personality and aesthetician.

The Music Generation project is underway (with a coordinating post still open in Co Mayo) and a national seminar to alert folks to further funding opportunities and other aspects of the programme will take place in September and is now accepting registrations.

There’s so many folks looking for work out there at the moment (mucho trafico on the jobs & internships page at the minute) – and if you’ve an interest in upskilling in digital media, and have been unemployed for 6 months or more,  the WebElevate programme (in conjunction with DIT and the Digital Skills Academy) is offering 120 funded places on a series of courses to be run in the Digital Hub.

Lots happening in theatreland… Willie White was appointed as the new Artistic Director of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival to cheers all round! Congrats to Willie – there will be big shoes to fill at the Project!

Meanwhile both the Absolut Fringe Festival and the Theatre Festival have announced their programmes – with Irish Theatre Magazine providing a cheeky breakdown of Theatre Fest stats for your amusement J

The Everyman Theatre in Cork has also made a major appointment in its new Director Michael Barker-Caven, relocating to the People’s Republic from the UK.

I was delighted to see Thisispopbaby’s production Alice in Funderland is part of the Abbey’s schedule for 2012 – I missed its original staging and heard rave reviews, so it’s great to see there’ll be a second chance!

One great session at the recent Theatre Forum conference was led by John Deely on career management in the arts; he recently forwarded a useful e-workbook on to participants that might be of interest to many readers – it can be downloaded here.

The Guardian recently featured a polemic blog post on lack of women working in UK theatre – many of the comments are actually better (and more focused) than the original posting, but it makes for a really interesting read.

Festival season is in full swing and this weekend (and my family!) will see the Spraoi in Waterford, the international Street Fair festival. Lots happening over the bank holiday, but The Reich Effect weekend programme (celebrating the work of composer Steve Reich) at the Cork Opera House looks like another great bet if you’re down south.

Open House Dublin 2011 is looking for volunteers! It takes place from 7-9 October and is a fantastic event – have a look at their flier if you have time & energy to spare!

Over my holidays I read with some bemusement further articles on the ambition to turn Bank of Ireland’s College Green premises into a literary/cultural centre (a move strongly rebuffed by the bank) – an Irish Times editorial from a few weeks back offers the sage advice to consider the failure to establish a national opera company and the stagnation of plans to move/expand the Abbey and the National Concert Hall before plowing ahead with another ill-advised capital project.

However I was extremely pleased to hear the Irish Georgian Society has acquired the former Dublin Civic Museum for its new premises and plans to embark on a restoration of the building; we’ve a close relationship in the School with the GS and wish them the best with their snazzy new digs! It’s wonderful to have new life breathed into such an important city space.

The Irish Writers’ Centre is launching a new initiative in its ‘Novel Fair’ event, which invites first-time authors to submit anonymous work to be considered by a judging panel of folks from the publishing industry, and have the opportunity to meet directly with publishers and agents. It sounds like an unmissable opportunity for new writers; the submission deadline is November 11th.

Audiences Northern Ireland has re-launched its website – fancy!

Putting my board member hat on… the Irish Museums Association is seeking contributions (both articles and exhibition/book reviews) to this year’s journal Museum Ireland, the only publication in the country devoted to articles and discussion of museum-related matters. Send ‘em in!

I’m looking forward to seeing the latest exhibition at IMMA of photographs from the David Kronn collection – he’s promised his collection to IMMA, and it looks like a great chance to get a peek at a marvelous private collection.

Dublin-based Irish visual artist Al Freney has had one of his works selected for the prestigious BP Portrait Awards, hosted annually by the National Portrait Gallery in London – congrats! Here’s a press release if you’re interested to know more…

Weekly round-up: 14 April 2011

The good folks at Arts Audiences were kind enough to give me a preview of their new online training programme (fully launched on Tuesday!) on digital arts marketing — the skinny is that this is a cost-effective (€20 for each module or €95 for all seven) and focused way for folks to up-skill in the following areas:

Search Engine Optimisation ~ Beginners
Search Engine Optimisation ~ Advanced
Best Practice Web Design
Web Analytics
Social Media Marketing
Online Advertising
Email Marketing
Universal Access

Funded by the Arts Council, Temple Bar Cultural Trust and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, it’s delivered by Susan Hallam and includes case studies of the ABSOLUT Fringe Festival, the Abbey, Balor Arts Centre in Donegal, Éigse Carlow Arts Festival, and the National Concert Hall. This looks to be a great resource for enhancing your online chops; other offerings from Arts Audiences have been jumped on like office candy, so let me know if you’re liking the look of these too…

Business to Arts also held a reception Tuesday night to mark the many new initiatives they’ve recently launched — Fundit (which just had its first project reach 100% funding), New Stream Project, Arts Fund for Ireland, etc. Culture Minister Deenihan was also on hand to say a few words — my notes from his short speech read ‘cultural broker’ ‘private philanthropy’ and ‘Kerry’ (the first two refer to the aspects of his pre-election Arts Plan that have been identified as objectives for the new department; the third was the term of highest spoken frequency). The BtoA core team of Stuart, Rowena and Andrew have done amazing work over the past few years and deserve all the kudos coming their way! I was delighted as well to see Mason Hayes & Curran’s lovely collection of artworks in their offices — particularly the Corban Walker piece in the atrium (he’s the next featured artist for the Irish Pavilion at Venice) and the Rowena Dring textile work I spotted on the first floor (she had a fab exhibition at the Rubicon a few years ago I wrote about).

The third big honking thing to launch on Tuesday was Dublin City Council’s Public Art Programme, detailing plans and themes for the upcoming round of public art projects. The four strands of the programme are (1) Dublin, (2) Interaction with the City, (3) Connecting with the Public, and (4) City Contexts; a call for proposals for Strand 2 is open until 27 June. The launch document also includes a striking series of pinhole photographs taken by young Dubliners, the result of a commission from the Gallery of Photography.

The Art Fund in the UK (the largest public endowment for the arts in the UK, established in 1903) has announced it’s increasing its funding available to museums to purchase new works of art by 50% — that’s in addition to its launch of the ‘National Art Pass‘, which for an annual subscription of £35 (and less for students etc) will offer free admission and discounts to exhibitions in museums across the UK (*wipes drool from keyboard*).

Dublin Contemporary is hiring for five temporary positions — deadline is 22 April (has also been added to the jobs page).

Don’t forget about the Visual Arts Workers’ Forum (‘Work It’) at Project next Weds (20 April) — the schedule & session descriptions have now been posted.

There’s a conference on contemporary cultural policy (with a specific German focus) coming up on 6-7 May: ‘Contemporary German-Irish cultural relations in a European Perspective: Exploring issues in cultural policy and practice‘. The conference is co-organized by the Goethe Institute Dublin and The Centre for Irish-German Studies at the University of Limerick; attendance is free!

NCAD and UCD have entered into an ‘academic alliance‘ (yeah, I wasn’t sure at first what that meant either)– we’ve been having a series of discussions with folks from both institutions about new research strands, collaborative projects, new cross-listed modules, and the possibility of joint MA programmes — the six themes are (1) the studio: from process to product; (2) the expanded academy – college and communities; (3) text and image; (4) the city: urban cultures; (5) culture and institutions; (6) arts and healthcare. I’m particularly keen on numero (5) — lots of enthusiasm and great ideas at our last meeting — on to the achievable objectives, what ho!

I’m currently working on the idea of developing a new upper-BA course on photography (history, development & theory) for UCD in 2012-3; I’ve been in lots of interesting conversations in the past week over directions it could take & possible collaborators/opportunities for cross-listing. Hugh Campbell (prof of architecture over here at the Big B) has been running an MA level module in architecture, space and photography — I’ve been inspired by their class blog ‘Space Framed’ and would be interested to see any other examples of Irish 3rd level class blogs that make good use of the online medium (Blackboard, I’m looking at you.)

I was be/amused yesterday to be contacted by a journo from the Irish Independent researching an article on ‘erotic Irish art’ (!) After ascertaining this was in fact a serious request, I was surprised by how many examples my colleagues and I were able to rustle up (ah, St George Hare of Limerick, we didn’t forget you!) Now I’ve *another* module to start developing… :p

As a coda… thanks also to everyone over the past few weeks I’ve run into who have had nice things to say about the blog! It’s nice (and a little creepy) to think how many of y’all read this every week… hope you find it useful, and I always welcome notices, job announcements, press releases, constructive critique, and chocolate.