€1.05m for Music, Traditional Arts and Opera in New Arts Grant Funding

Arts Council Chair Sheila Pratschke, Minister Josepha Madigan and Arts Council Director Orlaith McBride with artists and representatives of arts organisations at the funding announcement on 25 June.

€1.05m for Music, Traditional Arts and Opera in New Arts Grant Funding

Recipients include the National String Quartet Foundation, Ceol Connected and Dumbworld.

The Arts Council has announced over €1m in funding for music, the traditional arts and opera in its new Arts Grant Funding programme. The programme was developed as part of the Council’s new ten-year strategy. Over €6.8m in total was awarded across all art forms.

In the music category, €694,050 was awarded to 21 recipients, including Louth Contemporary Music Society (€80,000), the National String Quartet Foundation (€74,050) and the Galway Music Residency (€52,000).

Seven traditional arts organisations received total funding of €292,000, including Ceol Connected (€60,000), the Séamus Ennis Cultural Centre (€50,000) and Comharchumann Forbartha Ghaoth Dobhair (€42,000), which organises Scoil Gheimhridh Ghaoth Dobhair.

Dumbworld received €61,460 in the opera category. The Journal of Music received funding of €45,000.

Commenting on the funding announcements, Sheila Pratschke, Chair of the Arts Council, said:

The demand for funding under this programme was enormous … The Arts Council is doing much to support artists and we want to do so much more. We know that if we invest in artists now, we have a unique opportunity to deliver the trifecta; results for the arts, results for society and results for the economy.

She added:

Helping government to deliver on its recently announced programme Global Ireland 2025 is a challenge that we relish.With the right investment, in the right places, fostering the right artists, we can fan the glowing embers of the artists who will fill our galleries, theatres and bookshelves into the future. These are the people who will increase our global footprint, who will entice our visitors and entertain our citizens. Most importantly, we can find the people who will define, re-invent, question, reflect, and codify who we are as a people and a state. What better challenge could we have?

‘Brings us together – and keeps us together’
The Arts Grant announcements included €1.7m for theatre, €790k for visual arts, €733k for English-language literature, €568k for arts participation, €535k for young people, children and education (YPCE), €485k for film, €460k for dance, €165k for circus, €90k for Irish-language literature, €90k for artists’ support, €67k for venues, €49k for festivals and events, and €35k for spectacle.

Welcoming the announcement, Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Josepha Madigan TD said

Art enriches us personally, gives heart and expression to our community, leaves us more creative and imaginative, drives our economy with creativity and innovation. It makes Ireland attractive for tourism but most of all, the arts in Ireland brings us together – and keeps us together. My job as Minister is not to make art but to support art and to enable artists by sustaining momentum and investment. I know, too, the essential, central role of the Arts Council in sustaining, encouraging and supporting the arts…. It is something to be proud of that we as a people honour our artists. … The exciting funding programme announced here today will further that agenda this year and for many years to come.

For full Arts Grant funding details across all art forms, see below. For more information, visit www.artscouncil.ie.

Published on 26 June 2018

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