The Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan TD, has announced Tania Banotti as the new Director of the Creative Ireland Programme with effect from June.

Creative Ireland was launched in December 2016 with ‘art, music, drama and coding’ tuition for all children as one of its core objectives. In December 2017, it announced that it will also role out a nationwide choral initiative for children by 2019. The budget for Creative Ireland in 2018 is €8.5m.
 
Speaking on the appointment, Minister Madigan said:

I want to congratulate Tania on her new role. I have no doubt she will make an enormous contribution to the work of Creative Ireland and continue to ‘place creativity at the centre of public policy’.

Tania Banotti is currently CEO of the Institute of Advertising Practitioners of Ireland and was previously CEO of Theatre Forum. She was one of the founders and then Secretary of the National Campaign for the Arts and is a former Chief Executive of Screen Producers Ireland. Banotti also worked for the UN in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, for a number of years. 

Commenting on her appointment, Banotti said:

I am over the moon to be appointed to this role. Creative Ireland is a hugely ambitious initiative. Many of its goals are ones I have worked on my whole professional life so I’m looking forward to starting.

For more on Creative Ireland, visit https://creative.ireland.ie/en