Of Interest: Arts Council of Ireland Funding Opportunites Calendar for 2025

Arts Council of Ireland logo

The Arts Council of Ireland has listed this year’s awards schedule. Guidelines are typically made available two weeks in advance of the opening of a scheme. Full details for individual awards can be found on the Available Funding Pagehttps://www.artscouncil.ie/available-funding/

Possible awards of interest are the following: Visual Arts Bursary Award, Agility Award, Young People, Children, and Education Bursary Award, and the Artist in the Community Scheme.

To see this year’s schedule, visit the Arts Council’s website – https://www.artscouncil.ie/funding-opportunities-schedule/

Disclaimer for Feltmakers Ireland Blog

Feltmakers Ireland aims to share information about awards, education, events, exhibitions, and opportunities that you will find interesting. Our sharing is neither paid for by nor an endorsement of these individuals or organisations.

Contact Us: If you have any concerns about content, please email us at feltmakersie@gmail.com.

Questions: For questions about content, please follow the link to the organisation involved in hosting the event.

News: Deirdre Crofts – Awards and Exhibition

Feltmakers Ireland committee member Deirdre Crofts, who tirelessly organises our Sunday Sessions, has been awarded an Agility Award from the Arts Council of Ireland to further her multi-faceted practice. Besides feltmaking and weaving, she works with clay and automata. In addition, she has won an EU workshop and the opportunity for an international exhibition in Italy or Spain.

Moreover, she has a vessel displayed in the juried Ceramics Ireland Selected Members Exhibition, which is at Rathfarnham Castle and runs until the 8th of September.

Deirdre’s piece

For more information about the exhibition, visit the Rathfarnham Castle website – https://www.rathfarnhamcastle.ie/exhibitions/

Image: Grainne Watts Vortex Vessel

Disclaimer for Feltmakers Ireland Blog

Feltmakers Ireland aims to share information about awards, education, events, exhibitions, and opportunities that you will find interesting. Our sharing is neither paid for by nor an endorsement of these individuals or organisations.

Contact Us: If you have any concerns about content, please email us at feltmakersie@gmail.com.

Questions: For questions about content, please follow the link to the organisation involved in hosting the event.

Opportunity: Agility Awards – Arts Council of Ireland

The Arts Council of Ireland has opened up applications for its Agility Awards.

The Agility Award aims to support individual professional freelance artists and arts workers at any stage in their careers, with awards up to €5,000. The Agility Award grant is of up to €5,000. It is open to musicians, actors, writers, dancers, filmmakers, and visual and other artists so that they can develop their practice and are based in all four provinces of Ireland.

In 2023, 597 successful participants received funding of up to €5,000 each. (You can apply for any amount between €1,500 and €5,000.)

Deadline: Thursday, the 25th of April, 2024.

For more information, visit their website – https://www.artscouncil.ie/Funds/Agility-Award/


Disclaimer for Feltmakers Ireland Blog

Feltmakers Ireland aims to share information about awards, education, events, exhibitions, and opportunities that you will find interesting. Our sharing is neither paid for by nor an endorsement of these individuals or organisations.

Contact Us: If you have any concerns about content, please email us at feltmakersie@gmail.com.

Questions: For questions about content, please follow the link to the organisation involved in hosting the event.

Event: Reflecting on Previous and Planning Future Bealtaine Festivals

The Gathering is a day of networking, showcasing good practice, discussion and feedback on the May Bealtaine festival. It is an opportunity to hear about the challenges and needs of the organisers, highlighting interesting and inspirational events from the previous festival, and providing practical support for local organisers.

This year’s event will take place in the beautiful surroundings of the National Gallery of Ireland and will bring together the Bealtaine community of organisers, artists, partners, and supporters to look at different issues of community, diversity and new directions in our work.

We’re also looking forward to hearing about issues facing organisers around the country and how we can better support the planning of fantastic events for Bealtaine 2024.

When: the 15th of November, from 10 AM until 4:30 PM.

For more information, visit their website – https://bealtaine.ie/tickets-for-the-gathering-2023/

Open Call: Pallas Projects – Artist Initiated Projects

Pallas Projects/Studios’ Artist-Initiated Projects, is an Arts Council-funded, open-submission, annual gallery programme that is highly accessible to artists, presented in the context of an established gallery space with a dedicated tradition towards the development of artists in a peer-led, supportive environment.

Its focus is on early/mid-career, emerging artists and recent graduates, who demonstrate their potential with the quality of their work, and their ambition to challenge and test their practice in the public realm. A relatively short turnaround time of 3–9 months allows the programme to be responsive, reflect what artists are currently making, and encourages experimentation and risk-taking.

Open Call! Submissions for 2024 are now open.

Deadline: 5pm, Thursday 23rd November 2023.

They have a video recording of an information session about their guidelines – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wMzvipCmJk

For more information about the project, visit their website – https://pallasprojects.org/get-involved

Disclaimer for Feltmakers Ireland Blog

Feltmakers Ireland aims to share information about awards, education, events, exhibitions, and opportunities that you will find interesting. Our sharing is neither paid for by nor an endorsement of these individuals or organisations.

Contact Us: If you have any concerns about content, please email us at feltmakersie@gmail.com.

Questions: For questions about content, please follow the link to the organisation involved in hosting the event.

Opportunity: Festivals Investment Scheme

The Arts Council of Ireland announces round two of the Festivals Investment Scheme (FIS) for festivals that commence between the 1st of July 2024 and the 31st of December 2024.

They welcome applications from organisations (voluntary and professional) operating annual, biennial or triennial festival programmes and support multi-disciplinary arts festivals and those in a single art form discipline.

The Festivals Investment Scheme is a competitive scheme that offers funding to support the staging of festivals on a non-recurring basis.

The deadline is Thursday, 23rd of November, 2023.

For more information, visit their website – https://www.artscouncil.ie/Funds/Festivals-Investment-Scheme/

Exhibition and Education: Exhibition of Architectural Drawings and 3 Felting Workshops

A close look at revitalising church buildings as part of Architecture at the Edge 2023; an exhibition of drawings & series of felting workshops.

This exhibition presents a study of St. John’s ‘Church on the Hill‘ in Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, through survey work, mapping, and archival material, alongside exploratory drawings of church repurposing projects in Flanders, Belgium.

Additionally, as a form of church revitalisation, a series of wool-felting workshops will take place, where up to 20 participants will be guided through the process of wet-felting a large-scale textile artwork together to be displayed within the church as part of the exhibition.

No previous experience is needed – the workshops are intended to be inclusive and convivial, bringing people together for conversation, storytelling, and exploring a shared vision for the future of St. John’s.

The project is led by Feltmakers Ireland member Beibhinn Delaney, in collaboration with Marie-Caroline Kawa and Lara Clifford, and is based on previous research supported by the Arts Council Agility Award 2022 and assisted Prof. Sven Sterken and Charlotte Ardui of KU Leuven, whose expertise is in adaptive reuse of Flemish churches.

Support kindly comes from the Arts Council of Ireland, Galway County Council, and Donegal Yarns, who have provided beautiful Irish wool, locally sourced from Galway sheep.

The exhibition runs from the 29th of September through the 8th of October. Open 12:00 – 17:00 PM.

There are three felting workshops on the following dates: Friday, the 29th of September, Tuesday, the 3rd of October, and Friday, the 7th of October. Each runs from 14:30 – 16:30 PM and needs to be booked.

For more information and to book the free workshops, visit the Architecture at the Edge (AATE) website – https://www.architectureattheedge.com/events-2023/faith-in-the-future

To learn more about church repurposing, read this interesting article by Beibhinn Delaney on Type, a website focussing on the design of the built environment. – https://www.type.ie/blog/this-is-my-church

Event: Culture Night 2023

The eighteenth edition of Culture Night will occur on Friday, the 22nd of September, 2023.

Doors will open later, and special and unique events will be specifically programmed at participating locations. Thanks to the continued support of the Arts Council and Local Authorities across the island of Ireland, all activities will be available to the public free of charge.

You can search by genre, location, age, and start time. There is a lot happening!

To search for what’s happening, visit their website – https://culturenight.ie/

Opportunities: Arts and Disability Connect Info Session

The Arts and Disability Connect scheme is designed to support artists with disabilities to be ambitious, to develop their practice, and to connect with arts organisations and professionals in the Republic of Ireland.

Arts and Disability Connect includes Mentoring, Training, New Work, and Research and Reflection awards for individual artists with disabilities.

On Tuesday, the 19th of September, there is a Zoom information session.

Application deadline: Tuesday, the 10th of October at 4 PM.
Applicants will be contacted with their outcome by early December.

For more information, visit their website – https://adiarts.ie/artists/funding/connect/

Open Call: Culture Night – Friday, 22nd September 2023

Culture Night invites everyone, everywhere, on one joyful night to discover and celebrate all that our culture is today. The Culture Night experience is across a wide range of sectors – culture, arts, heritage, education, hospitality, tourism, health and commercial and corporate enterprise.

Its diversity is reflected in the scope and range of events and people who participate – and it aims to connect with engaged audiences and extend its reach to those who may not always have access.

For more information, visit their website – https://culturenight.ie/get-involved/