As a potential applicant for Circus funding, you should consider what the aims of your proposal are and what activities you are seeking funding to support. Several Circus funding awards are available, and each one is directed towards a specific area of Circus activity. For each round of an award that is offered, a set of ‘Guidelines’ is published on the Arts Council’s website. The activities that each funding award aims to support are outlined in the corresponding award guidelines, under the section on award objectives/purpose and priorities. This section should be read when considering which funding award is most suited to the activities that you wish to undertake, and before making your application.

In general, Circus supports both classical and contemporary practices, which can include (but not limited to) aerial, acrobatics, hand balancing, funambulism (tightwire), object manipulation, clowning, magic, puppetry and many more. 

Information specific to the supported practices can be found under our policy here.

Please contact us at csas@artscouncil.ie if clarification is needed on your specific practice. 

As an early career professional artist, you can consider making an application to the Agility Award or Bursary Award. The Agility Award aims to support individual professional freelance artists and arts workers at any stage in their careers to develop their practice, work, or skills. The Bursary Award aims to support professional artists at any stage of their career to develop their practice and to provide artists with the time and resources to think, research, reflect and critically engage with their work.

You can apply for the Circus Project Award. The purpose of this award is to support ambitious, high quality, stand-alone initiatives that specifically deliver a presentation to or an engagement with an audience or public. You can find out more about this in our available funding section.

Yes, although they might not earn income continuously or exclusively from their arts practice, applicants must identify themselves and be recognised by their peers as professional practising artists. 

The Circus Bursary Award is an individual artist's support award designed to develop an artist's practice with no expectation of presentation to an audience. The Circus Project Award is designed to support the creation of new projects specifically to be presented to Irish audiences.

For more detailed information please refer to the guidelines for each award, located on our available funding page here.

The most common mistake is not giving yourself enough time to read the guidelines and prepare for what you have to do to make a successful application.

Other common mistakes include (where applicable for each award):

• Not reading the guidelines carefully;
• Missing the deadline;
• No supporting material or missing supporting materials;
• No budget template (if required);
• No letters of support or MOUs (Memorandum of Understanding) (if required);
• Insufficient evidence of financial support from other sources (if required);
• Insufficient evidence of collaborators or partners (if required);
• Lack of clear detail about what is proposed and how it will be achieved.
  

Access costs for artists or participants with disabilities cover any requirements you may have in order to remove barriers that might stop you from completing your proposal. This may include, for example, costs towards additional time needed to complete an element of your proposal or additional assistance required to deliver your proposed activity. Note: in the event that you are requesting access costs, you should include information about the costs and how you arrived at them as part of your supporting documentation.

Please contact our Access Officer, Vanessa Carswell, at access@artscouncil.ie for further information regarding access costs. 

No. You can apply to Culture Ireland, the national body for the promotion of Irish arts worldwide. You can find out more about Culture Ireland and funding opportunities here: http://www.cultureireland.ie/

To be eligible to apply, applicants must be resident in the Republic of Ireland. There are certain exceptions where the Arts Council may deem eligible applications made by those based outside the Republic of Ireland. However, before admitting as eligible any such application, the applicant would need to explicitly outline within the application how the outcomes of any such proposal would benefit the arts in the Republic of Ireland, and the Arts Council must be satisfied with same.

A PPS number is required to initiate payment if an application is successful. If you are waiting to receive a PPS number and you require an ARN, we can manually register applicants for an OLS account in order to make their application. Contact us at csas@artscouncil.ie for further information about this. 

Yes. While the Travel and Training Award is currently paused, artists, curators and arts practitioners can apply for the Agility Award or Bursary Award. This award is open to applications specifically intended to develop practice, skills or work. This can include development opportunities abroad and costs relating to international travel for the development of artistic practice, skills or work. However, please note the purpose of Culture Ireland in this regard also. 

Please refer further to the guidelines to ensure your planned activities are eligible.

Each award and scheme have its own set of guidelines that sets out the process for assessing and adjudicating applications. Please refer to the guidelines document for specifics of each award to find out more about objectives and priorities of each award.

Some of our awards are assessed by a peer panel that reviews all shortlisted applications and associated materials, then scores and makes decisions. The purpose of peer-panel meetings is to allow for a diversity of expert views to inform the decision-making process. Peer panels normally consist of at least three external adjudicators with relevant artform and/or arts practice expertise. Each meeting is usually led by an Arts Council member acting as non-voting chair. Arts Council advisers and staff attend as required, and those involved in the initial assessment of applications are on hand to provide information as required. Panelists have access to all shortlisted applications and associated materials prior to the day of the meeting, at which point they thoroughly review, discuss and score shortlisted applications. Following this, applications are ranked by score. Considering the competitive context and the available budget, it is likely that the Arts Council will be able to fund only a proportion of the applications received.

A peer panel reviews, scores and makes decisions on applications shortlisted for the Bursary and Project awards. The panel is asked to review applications and to award them with a score. The scores are then added up and the applications that scored the highest are offered funding, until the available budget is fully allocated.

To ensure fairness and equity in decision-making, a panel member must declare an interest where they have a close personal or professional link with the applicant or are linked in any way with the application. The interest must be declared as soon as the panelist becomes aware of it. This may be at the point when s/he is approached to sit on the panel (if the ‘interest’ is known at that stage) or following receipt of the list of applicants. Where an interest is declared, the panelist will not receive papers relating to that applicant and will be required to leave the room when the specific application is being reviewed. For more information on the Declaration of Interest please view relevant sections of funding guidelines.

On account of the large volume of applications received across all art forms, the assessment and decision-making process usually takes approximately ten to fifteen weeks from the closing deadline of the award. 

The letter of offer you receive will outline the steps required to draw down any funding offered. Whether you are applying as an individual, a company or partnership, you will need a tax clearance certificate with a valid PPS number and a bank account in the name of the applicant. Monies offered cannot be paid by the Arts Council to an account in a name other than that of the applicant.

In most cases, it is generally expected that all funding for proposed activities will be drawn down within 12 months of the decision letter. Please refer specifically to the guidelines for each programme. 

All awards are made in a competitive environment focusing on the criteria outlined and, where relevant, specific criteria for the award. Unsuccessful applicants should consider applying again in future rounds. Please refer to the guidelines of the award to further understand what can be deemed ineligible.

Because of the competitive nature of the awards and the large number of applicants, it is not possible to make an award to all eligible and good applicants. Eligibility and compliance with criteria for assessment alone does not guarantee receipt of an award.

In general, you may not apply for activities that have already been assessed by the Arts Council unless you demonstrate that you have developed the proposal since previously applying. If you submit exactly the same application for assessment, it will be deemed ineligible. In certain circumstances, however, we might allow you to reapply with the same application, but you must contact the CSAS team in advance to clarify if you are allowed to do so. 

Yes, please email csas@artscouncil.ie and request feedback.

Part of the Arts Council’s role is to promote the arts, and we are hoping that you will help us do that in a vibrant way. You can upload any images of your funded project at the link below to help us do this. Before you do so, please read the terms and conditions for Image Bank Submissions. Any questions on Image Bank Submissions can be sent to megan.mcinerney@artscouncil.ie

PLEASE SUBMIT IMAGES HERE

We love to hear about all the work being produced by artists and organisations we support, so do let us know when and where you will be presenting your work. Please email csas@artscouncil.ie with details. Where feasible our Adviser or Head of Teams might attend.

For general information about the Arts Council's mission and overall strategy, we advise that you look at Making Great Art Work - Arts Council Strategy (2016–2025) | The Arts Council | An Chomhairle Ealaíon

For even wider context you might find our other policies relevant too:

• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy
• Paying the Artist Policy
• Climate Action Policy Consultation
• Place, Space, People, policy framework for socio-spatial equity in the arts