Deadline: 9-Feb-23
The Arts Council is inviting nominations for Agility Award 2023 that aims to support individual professional freelance artists and arts workers at any stage in their careers.
For the purpose of this award, the Arts Council’s definition or focus in certain artforms is set out as follows:
- Architecture – For this award in architecture applicants must be architects or architecture graduates.
- Arts Participation – In the area of Arts Participation, the Arts Council supports artistic collaboration between artists and other arts professionals and individuals or groups, that do not typically engage in the arts and are not arts professionals.
- Film – The Arts Council supports film artists who engage in experimental or non-narrative film-making that is made for cinema exhibition in the first instance and applicants will need to demonstrate a practice in this area.
- Literature – The Arts Council supports literary writing. For the purposes of this award, literary writing is defined as fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction (e.g. memoir and essays), graphic novels, children’s fiction and poetry and illustrated picture books.
- Traditional Arts – The Arts Council supports traditional music, song and dance and the oral arts such as storytelling, agallamh beirte and lúibíní.
- Theatre – The Arts Council’s definition of Theatre is either dramatic or post-dramatic work performed by actors in front of a live audience in the same space or location (which may or may not be a formal theatre space).
- Dance – The Arts Council supports Dance artists who engage dance professionally and are open to proposals from freelance artists and arts workers who have completed their dance training.
What is the purpose and priority of the Agility Award?
- The purpose of the Agility Award is to enable individual artists and arts workers like you to do one or more of the following:
- Develop your practice
- Develop your work
- Develop your skills
- They will prioritise applications that best show how your practice as an artist or arts practitioner will benefit from taking time to develop your practice or to work on artistic ideas. They encourage applications from early-career stage artists and arts practitioners who may not have previously applied to the Arts Council.
Funding Information
- Funding of €1,500 – €5,000.
What activities can I apply for?
- You can apply for any activities that will support your development as an artist.
- For example, they would consider proposals that would enable you to spend time:
- Working at your practice
- Researching or thinking about or developing a new idea for future presentation
- Developing your technical skills in a particular area
- Developing or learning new skills related to your practice
- Working with a mentor or collaborator(s) to develop an idea, or to help you upskill within an area of, or related to, your practice
- Developing an idea in collaboration with a potential production partner(s).
Eligibility Criteria
- The award is open to individual professional freelance artists and arts practitioners at any stage in their career.
- For this award please note the following definitions:
- A freelance artist: you are not employed or contracted on a fulltime basis by an arts organisation funded through Arts Council programmes or through direct state subsidy or by a commercial arts entity.
- A professional artist: A person who is actively pursuing a career as an artist in any artform, and who considers their arts work as their main profession or career. This applies even if their work in the arts is not their main source of income or they have other employment. An arts worker: for the Agility Award, the Arts Council supports arts workers whose proposal to develop their own practice clearly contributes to the artistic development of the arts in Ireland.
For more information, visit Arts Council.
