The Arts Council of Northern Ireland has designed this programme to support individual artists, creative practitioners and performers

There are two primary objectives of the programme:
– to support proposals for the research, design and future presentation of specific showcases, performance(s) and/or other forms of public presentation aimed at groups and communities otherwise facing barriers to the arts on a range of platforms
– to engage the arts sector in employment by providing individual artists, creative practitioners and performers with financial support to create work and make a vital contribution to the well-being of communities.

There is an expectation that funding from the Scheme will lead in the future to some form of meaningful public engagement and/or other forms of public access opportunity, in large or small scale.

This programme prioritises applications that:
– Engage with groups, participants and audiences otherwise without easy access to or participation in the arts
– Benefit individual artists, creative practitioners and performers who are currently in difficulties due to work restrictions imposed by COVID-19 protocols
– Propose new or newly-imagined projects as interventions of high artistic quality
– Are planned to reach significant audiences through ‘live’, ‘as live’ or recorded digital performance, publication, broadcast, reading, recording, and/or other audience channels
– Provide for an extended life and/or extended public reach and impact for the work or project that has been created.

Who can apply?
The Arts Council welcomes Expressions of Interest from freelance individual artists and creative practitioners and performers of all disciplines, genres, skills and practice. Applicant artists, creative practitioners and performers can also choose to work with arts organisations on projects where the leaders and principal beneficiaries are individual artists, creative practitioners or performers.

In addition to practicing individual artists, creative practitioners and performers as freelancers, included in the call are those who work in the arts as curators, editors, directors, creative producers, originators, among other roles. Each potential applicant should seek to evidence their eligibility for the scheme as an active creative.

Individual artists, creative practitioners and performers who have proven successful models of practice can make proposals based on adaptations or variations of such work.

See link below for further details.

NB: applications will be assessed on a rolling basis. There is no deadline for applying.