Offaly County Council announces details of its Arts Grants for 2012
February 2012This year Offaly County Council is delighted to advise that eligibility under the Arts Act Grants, which is a legislative function of the council, has been expanded to accommodate more groups. The Arts Act Grants will provide an opportunity for community groups, artists, drama groups, bands and choirs to seek support through the Arts Act Grant Scheme.
Arts Officer Sinéad O’Reilly said, “Through this scheme we will be able to reward applications which are innovative, produce maximum community impact, provide quality experience and make best use of public funding. We know that many groups have benefitted greatly from receiving grants over the years and this support has allowed them to expand their professionalism and capacity, and we were delighted to be in a position to do that. However, due to reduced resources the council is not in a position to continue with certain individual schemes, i.e., Youth Arts Scheme, Community Band Grants, Support to Artists Scheme and Drama Awards in 2012. They will however come within the scope of the Arts Act Grants Scheme in 2012. We are in a new climate now, but cultural development is still integral to building communities and promoting the county, so we will support projects which will stimulate this process while maintaining artistic integrity.”
In addition the council have created a new scheme for festivals with an arts programme. This scheme aims to reward festivals who are ambitious with their programming, who are actively building audiences and who have the capacity through a quality programme to enhance the cultural tourism potential of the county.
Commenting on this new approach of investing in festivals, the Arts Officer stated, “Offaly has a high concentration of festivals and events, with new ones appearing almost annually. We now have 13 festivals who wholly or predominately are celebrating the arts and more are in development. Audiences want and expect the ‘wow’ factor in festivals and the challenge for festival committees is how to meet and exceed that expectation, so that they are building audiences and raising the profile for their festival annually. This new scheme will reward four or five festivals who are pushing the boat out, and putting the county on the map.
“We greatly appreciate the mammoth voluntary effort that goes into running festivals, and the new County Arts Plan 2012 -2016, which is being brought to the council for approval for public consultation shortly, highlights a number of other ways that we can support festival development that is not resource dependent, such as encouraging festivals to share resources and working with tourism agencies to create a greater spotlight on festivals in Offaly.”
Application forms and guidelines can be downloaded from www.offaly.ie and queries are welcome to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or 05793 57400. The closing date for all applications is Friday March 9th 2012 at 3pm.
