Deadline: 25-Sep-23
Are you an artist working collaboratively with a community? Are you an artist or community group with an interest in working on a collaborative, socially engaged project? Apply for the Arts Council’s Artist in the Community (AIC) Scheme Award.
The Arts Council’s Artist in the Community (AIC) Scheme, managed by Create, offers awards to enable artists and communities of place and/or interest to work together on projects. The AIC Scheme also offers an annual bursary, as well as residencies and a summer school. The AIC scheme is open to artists from any of the following artform disciplines: architecture, circus, street art and spectacle, dance, film, literature (Irish and English language), music, opera, theatre, visual arts and traditional arts.
Objectives and Priorities
- The aim of the Artist in the Community Scheme (AIC) is to encourage meaningful collaboration between communities of place and/or interest and artists. Note:
- Create defines community in the broadest sense of the word, however for the AIC Scheme the artist or artists must be collaborating with a community of non-arts professionals.
- Create defines collaborative arts as artists and communities working closely together, often over extended periods of time, to make art.
Research & Development Award (Strand One)
- The purpose of the Research & Development Award is to support proposals from professional artists who wish to collaborate artistically with non-arts professionals. It is open to artists who wish to research and develop a project in a community context. This award was introduced to the AIC Scheme to provide the opportunity for artists to explore, test out ideas, or undertake the preliminary development of a project in a community and/or social context (e.g. arts and community, older people, prisons, health, cultural diversity etc).
- It is essential that there is significant contact between the artist and the community with which they intend working; the community must show support for the initiative:
- The Research & Development award is open to artists who wish to research and develop a project in a community context.
- The Research & Development Award (with Mentoring) is open to artists who wish to develop a community-based project and who have identified an artist mentor they want to work with during the research and development period.
- Recent Graduate, Research & Development Award (with Mentoring). This award is open to artists who have recently completed an undergraduate degree programme who are interested in developing a community-based project and have identified an artist mentor they want to work with during the research and development period.
Project Realisation Award (Strand Two)
- The purpose of the Project Realisation Award is to support proposals from communities of place and/or interest groups (non-arts professionals) who want to collaborate artistically with an artist/s.
- The Project Realisation Award is open to communities and groups (or their representative organisations) to undertake an arts project in a community setting or social context (e.g. arts and community, arts and older people, arts in prisons, arts and health, arts and cultural diversity, etc.).
- It is essential that consultation take place between the community and the artist so that both parties are involved in deciding on the nature of the project’s realisation. Group ownership of the art should be maintained at every stage.
- Projects are expected to be ambitious, innovative and visionary in concept and execution.
What may you apply for?
- Research & Development Award
- Research & Development Award (without mentoring) – maximum award €3,500. The time frame should be no longer than 6 months
- Research & Development Award (with mentoring) – maximum award €4,500 of which €1,000 is specifically to engage a mentor for the artist. The time frame should be no longer than 6 months
- Recent Graduate, Research & Development Award (with Mentoring) – maximum award €4,500 of which €1,000 is specifically to engage a mentor for the artist. The time frame should be no longer than 6 months. Recent graduates can request up to €1,000 additional funding to support the development of their practice.
- Project Realisation Award
- Projects: from 8 months up to 12 months – maximum award €15,000
Who is eligible to apply?
- The AIC Scheme is open to artists, communities and organisations. 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 Arts Council would need to be satisfied that the outcomes of any such proposal would benefit the arts in the Republic of Ireland.
- Recent Graduate, Research & Development Award (with Mentoring) – Recent Graduate artists are defined as those, of any age, who have graduated from an undergraduate degree programme in the arts in the past three years and are interested in developing or exploring or are establishing a professional career in collaborative arts practice. This award specifically targets emerging artists/practitioners who have completed their undergraduate degree and who are not in postgraduate studies at the time of the award.
- Create particularly welcomes new applicants who represent the diversity of Irish society. They encourage applications from all areas of the community regardless of your gender, sexual orientation, civil or family status, religion, age, disability, race or membership of the Traveller Community, or socio-economic background.
Ineligible
- Individuals or organisations looking for participants to populate a pre-planned arts project (as opposed to those looking to plan and develop a project from beginning to end in collaboration with a specific group or groups).
- Individuals or organisations working in the area of Arts and Communities where the primary target group is children and/or young people unless there is at least an equal focus on intergenerational practice.
- Individuals currently in undergraduate or postgraduate education (or who will be during the period for which this award is offered) are not eligible for Research & Development Awards. A postgraduate student may apply for a Project Realisation Award.
- Proposals from artists or arts organisations that do not include artistic collaboration with non-arts professionals.
- Organisations currently in receipt of funding under Arts Council grant programmes (Strategic Funding, Arts Centre Funding and Partnership Funding). However applicants may name such organisations as partners.
For more information, visit Create.