The Irish emigrant experience, the female munitions workers of the First World War, children’s curiosity for nature, and dance during the pandemic feature among 94 new commissions announced the Arts Council this week.
The investment, worth a total of €1.3 million across 20 counties, means that artists will partner with arts organisations to create new work for people in every region of the country and overseas.
Arts Council Director Maureen Kennelly said the agency was encouraged by the response from artists and delighted to be able to fund so many excellent applications.
“Individual artists and arts organisations are facing extraordinary challenges at this time, which makes the response to this year’s call for commissions all the more exceptional. These awards will enable artists to realise brilliant ideas and will help their commissioners make them available to the public,” she said.
Among the commissions funded:
The Ark will commission visual artist Clare Langan to create an imaginative new work for children to be exhibited at The Ark in 2022. The work will be a 10-minute film piece inspired by the inherent sense of awe and curiosity that children have for nature.
ANU will commission sound designer and composer Sinéad Diskin to create an environmental score, celebrating the Irish munitions workers of World War One – 4,000 women across Ireland. Provocations will be set by key historians.
The New York Irish Center will commission award-winning playwright Paul Meade. He will engage in workshops and interviews with Irish people using the centre, and write a script based on the stories focusing on the Irish emigrant experience.
The Liz Roche Dance Company will commission its associate artist Lucia Kickham to create a choreography exploring how bodies in dance are adapting to changes to dance practice and performance in the pandemic and to define a new approach to making that moves away from studio based ensemble work into more fluid pathways of transmission
All Arts Council funding opportunities can be seen at: http://www.artscouncil.ie/funding/
Source: Visual Artists Ireland News
