An Urgent Enquiry, Photo: Brian Cregan

Invitation to Collaboration supports regional and national initiatives in the field of local-authority-led arts development. The scheme is rooted in the policies set out in the Arts Council’s ten-year strategy (2016-2025), Making Great Art Work: Leading the Development of the Arts in Ireland (0.22 MB), and in A Framework for Collaboration: An Agreement Between the Arts Council and the County and City Management Association (1.5MB, PDF). The emphasis is placed on supporting partnerships that focus on developing projects, resources or services that are ambitious and are testing new ground. The following projects were funded in 2019:

Cultural Diversity Research and Development

This award will research and develop ways of enabling people from culturally diverse backgrounds to engage meaningfully with the arts in Sligo including professional development opportunities for artists - at all stages of their careers - who are interested in working in culturally diverse and socially engaged contexts.

Lead Partner: Sligo County Council
Partners: Ciarde Sligo Arts Festival, Create, Hawk’s Well Theatre, The Model
Award €20,000

This Place

An ambitious regional research project that will explore the values of place based arts programming. The aim is to create better policy and practice understandings in the nuances and challenges of working in a long term way with communities, as well as the very real (but often hidden) rewards of such investment.

Lead Partner: Carlow County Council
Partners: Create, Cavan, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown, South Dublin, Kilkenny, Meath, Wicklow and Wexford County Councils
Award €73,500

Art in Landscape

The project will research national and international models of sculpture parks and art trials in terms of curatorial approaches, public engagement and structural supports. Led by local authorities who have invested in Lough Boora Sculpture Park and Tír Saille, it will identify models of practice, sustainable solutions and partnerships and bring research together into a public platform.

Arts-in-the-Landscape-Report.pdf

Lead Partner: Offaly County Council
Partners: Mayo County Council, Visual Artists Ireland and Bord na Mona
Award €20,000

Mapping Arts & Health Across the Midlands [MAHAM]

This research project will map Arts, Health and Wellbeing programmes in the Midlands, look at national and international models of practice  and identify potential partners for collaboration, including a seminar on regional co-operation in arts practice.

Lead applicant: Laois County Council
Partners: Offaly and Westmeath County Councils, Waterford Healing Arts Trust, Helium and Anam Beo
Award €20,000

The Museum of Mythological Water Beasts (#3)

A residency programme in four counties along the River Shannon that will connect artists and community groups to create new collaborative artworks culminating in the publication of the evaluation results , reflections on residency models, collaborative processes and curatorial mapping.

Lead applicant: Limerick City and County Council
Partners: Cavan, Clare and Tipperary County Councils and Ormston House
Award: €75,000