ArtScape:Following last Saturday's announcement in these pages of the nominations for The Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards for 2007 (the winners will be announced at a ceremony on Sunday, February 24th, which will be broadcast on RTÉ on Monday 25th), the judges for this year's awards are already in place and starting their year assessing theatre productions throughout Ireland. This year's judges are Madeline Boughton, Sara Keating and Donal Shiels.
Madeline Boughton has worked with a range of arts organisations, including the National Theatre (Abbey and Peacock theatres), Project Arts Centre, Dublin Theatre Festival and Dance Council of Ireland. She was a board member and former joint artistic director of Dublin Youth Theatre, where she directed several plays and ran workshops. Boughton (left) was chairperson of Pan Pan Theatre Company from 2001 to 2003, and she sits on the editorial board of the National Association of Youth Drama's publication Youth Drama Ireland. She was ancillary programme co-ordinator with the 50th anniversary Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival last year.
Sara Keating is a freelance theatre critic and arts writer, contributing regularly to The Irish Times, Irish Theatre Magazine and the Sunday Business Post among other publications. In 2006 she received a PhD from the Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College Dublin, for her research on 20th-century Irish drama. She currently teaches contemporary Irish drama at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Dublin.
Donal Shiels has worked in the arts in Ireland and abroad for more than 20 years as a producer and promoter of theatre, opera, music and dance. Some of the leading Irish companies he has worked with include Opera Ireland, Druid, Second Age Theatre Company, Storytellers, Gúna Nua Theatre Company, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Rex Levitates Dance Company, the Gaiety Theatre and the Olympia Theatre. Outside of Ireland, Shiels (left) has worked with Disney Theatrical and TG&A International.
From 2003 to 2004 he managed the China/Ireland Cultural Exchange on behalf of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism. This was the largest ever cultural exchange between Ireland and any other country and ran across all art forms. In late 2004 he became chief executive of St Patrick's Festival, and in 2006 he acted as arts adviser to the then minister for arts John O'Donoghue.
The numbers are up
The people at Theatre Forum Ireland, rather than deciding to hibernate after Christmas, have instead been busy with the calculator. A massive number-crunching analysis of Arts Council funding has been going on since the final funding figures for 2008 were announced just before Christmas, and Theatreforumireland.com this week posted a headline analysis of Arts Council funding for the year, and - for members only - an analysis of Arts Council clients' funding going back to 2002, prior to the slash-and-burn budget for 2003, and a bar chart covering the gradual increase in funding since then, up to this year's cut. It adds the additional €3 million voted through in December to last year's budget, presumably because that is how it is designated, even though the money will be spent this year. So 2007's funding comes to €83 million, and this year's to €82.1 million.
There's a breakdown of how funding is assigned by art form, with theatre getting the biggest slice of the cake - but this is skewed because from the total (€20,813,754) funding for theatre in 2008, 48 per cent is going to the Abbey, as part of its three-year funding agreement. Funding is also tracked under the new three categories of funding (Regularly Funded Organisations, Annual Programming, and Annual Funding) for each art form, going right back to 2002. From this, 2006 seems like the boom year in terms of increases, but even in 2006, Regularly Funded Organisations, the key organisations in the arts, had lower percentage increases than smaller organisations, presumably because it was from a larger base. There's a lot of meat in these figures, and they mask an array of stories and fates all over Ireland.
It certainly looks like a challenging year for a lot of people, with very modest increases in funding, and Regularly Funded Organisations in particular facing questions about where to go from here, having built up the edifice, and made plans on that basis.
A night to remember
Ninety-nine per cent satisfaction rates for Dublin Culture Night has to be a good news story. Estimating that about 80,000 people experienced Culture Night last year, organisers Temple Bar Cultural Trust's (TBCT) research found that 99 per cent of those surveyed would recommend attending Culture Night to relatives and friends. Last September's late night city-wide arts event involved more than 80 arts and culture organisations, scores of artists and tens of thousands of members of the public. This year's date has already been set for September 19th and they plan to build on the success and increase the scope of Culture Night this year.
TBCT commissioned from DIT Tourism Research Centre independent professional research (which they say reflects the overall profile and attitudes of people who attended Dublin Culture Night 2007). They found that 97 per cent would attend Culture Night again, 97 per cent would recommend the venues they visited to their relatives and friends, 64 per cent attended a cultural venue for the first time because of Culture Night, 89 per cent of people would attend cultural organisations more frequently if the opening hours were extended, and 92 per cent of people think that the third Friday in September is the right time to have Culture Night. More details on www.culturenight.ie.
Craftmakers and designers from throughout Ireland are putting the finishing touches to displays of the best of Irish craft, from woodwork and glass to jewellery and fashion, and lots of other things. They're getting ready for Showcase Ireland in the RDS, Ireland's biggest international trade show, which opens tomorrow and runs until Wednesday.
It's a first night of sorts for Úna Parsons, recently appointed chief executive of Crafts Council of Ireland (CCoI), which has more than 60 member organisations and more than 1,300 registered craftspeople in the €122 million Irish craft sector, and whose baby showcase is. The trade-only show expects up to 9,000 visitors, including 2,000 overseas buyers from Britain, North America, continental Europe, Japan and Korea, among other places - to see work from 550 exhibitors of Irish crafts and design, including small companies from around the country, emerging designers and established names and companies. The Source selection, within showcase, features the most cutting-edge of Irish craft as a rigorous judging process takes place before inclusion in the CCoI designated area.
Irish Architecture Foundation is looking for participants for the 11th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice in September. It represents an opportunity to demonstrate "the diversity, dynamism and richness of Irish architectural culture to a global audience". Proposals are sought for participation in Ireland's entry, and commissioners Nathalie Weadick (director of the Irish Architecture Foundation) and Hugh Campbell (senior lecturer in architecture at UCD) have set a theme for the Irish entry, The Lives of Spaces. Space is central to architecture, and yet curiously absent from architectural discourse, perhaps because it is so difficult to define. The deadline for submissions is February 1st. More details at www.architecturefoundation.ie, e-mail venice@architecturefoundation.ie.
The 2008 Darklight Festival, which explores the convergence of art, film, and technology, will take place from June 26th to 29th, and is calling for entries (see www.darklight.ie). Darklight has an open submission screening policy and feature films, documentaries, animations, experimental video works, music videos, commercial work, motion graphics, game sequences, live-action shorts and student productions are eligible for entry.
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