Deadline: 2-Feb-23
The Arts Council has launched the 2024 Advance Planning program under the Touring of Work Scheme.
Purpose
- Touring activity: this is where the same artistic programme or event is taking place in an iterative capacity in three or more places. Touring activity might involve performances, concerts, events or exhibitions or other forms of presentation of artistic work for the public to engage with.
- Touring and dissemination: the Arts Council recognises that artforms and arts practices vary in their means of bringing work to the public. They recognise that tours may involve multiple or alternative means of distributing and presenting work in artforms or arts practices that do not necessarily conform to the traditional touring model. This scheme applies the use of the term ‘touring’ to mean the presentation of all types of artistic work, including dissemination of work.
- Venue: this refers to arts centres, venues, galleries, schools, halls, churches, festivals or other acquired or curated spaces where the art is taking place.
- Artist/arts organisation: this refers to professional artists and/or professional arts organisations. The artist is understood to be 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.
- Public engagement: a term covering the broad range of encounters the public may have with the arts. The Arts Council identifies three areas of particular interest:
- Where the public engages as audience members (readers, listeners, spectators)
- Where the public engages as active participants, collaborators or co-creators of artistic work or arts practices
- Where the public actively engages in the arts in a voluntary or amateur capacity.
- Public-engagement strategy: the terms for this document may vary across the different sectors (mediation plan/audience plan/ PR and marketing plan), but for the purpose of touring they request this document to help us understand how you have identified your audience, how you will maximise your audience, what steps you have taken to ensure they know about the tour, and how you are approaching audience development.
- Audience: they understand audiences to be those who engage with the arts – e.g. people attending a concert, performance or event, visitors to an exhibition, readers of literary works, listeners and viewers of the visual arts, etc.
- Audience development: they understand audience development as any activity aimed at making the arts more widely accessible – e.g.
- Increasing audiences – attracting more people with the same profile as the current audience
- Deepening the relationship with the audiences – adding value to the audience experience by encouraging an audience to engage with related activities – e.g. other artforms, outreach, events, talks, workshops, discussions, etc.
- Diversifying audiences – attracting people with a different profile to the current audiences, including people who have had no previous contact with the arts or for whom access to the arts is difficult.
Objectives
- The objective of the Touring of Work Scheme is to deliver outcomes that ensure more people will enjoy high-quality arts experiences throughout the country.
- The artist and public engagement are core priorities of the Arts Council’s ten-year strategy Making Great Art Work. In supporting a strategic approach to touring, the Arts Council aims to deliver on these core policy priorities. They will prioritise tours of artistically excellent work, that aim to maximise public engagement, and have already been successfully produced in terms of critical and audience response. Some artform exceptions may apply.
- The Touring of Work Scheme is particularly relevant to the delivery of Arts Council goals in relation to spatial and demographic planning, as set out in their recently published spatial policy Place, Space and People, and in their commitment to developing the capacity of the arts.
- To develop the capacity of the arts infrastructure, they will prioritise proposals that seek to develop collaboration and the sustained growth of networks and partnerships – i.e. between artists, arts organisations, producers, promoters, local authorities, arts centres, festivals, other venues and other funding bodies.
- Through the development of local and national and international partnerships of expertise, they seek to encourage the sustainable growth of audiences, both in number and diversity, and to develop effective planning and consideration of the environmental sustainability of touring.
- Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) are core organisational values of the Arts Council’s strategy, which is centred on respecting diversity of artistic practice, of public engagement, and of social and cultural traditions. Their commitment to EDI is further championed by their arts-practice priorities in the Arts Participation and Young People, Children and Education.
Funding Information
- No upper limit has been set on the amount that you may apply for. However, the Arts Council operates under budgetary constraints, the scheme is very competitive, and the Arts Council reserves the right to offer less than requested.
Eligible Projects
- Artform and practice(s) Architecture, Arts Centres, Arts participation, Circus, Dance, Film, Literature, Music, Opera, Spectacle, Street arts, Theatre, Touring, Traditional arts, Visual arts, YPCE.
Eligibility Criteria
- The scheme is open to individuals and organisations that wish to tour artistic work in the Republic of Ireland in 2024.
- Applicants to Strategic/Arts Centre/Partnership Funding may apply to this Advanced Planning Touring of Work Scheme.
- To be eligible to apply, you must be:
- Based/resident in the Republic of Ireland. They may consider your application if you are based outside the Republic of Ireland. However, your application would have to convince them that your proposal would benefit the arts in the Republic of Ireland.
- Professional practising artists. Even though you might not earn income continuously or exclusively from your arts practices, you must identify yourself, and be recognised by your peers, as professional practising artists.
- Unsuccessful applicants to Strategic/Arts Centre/Partnership Funding may apply to the Touring Scheme(s).
- Applicants who are in receipt of other Arts Council funding are eligible to apply, provided it is clear that the touring activity for which funding is sought is additional to those activities for which Arts Council funding has already been offered.
Ineligible
Those who are not eligible to apply include the following:
- Individuals or organisations who do not have a demonstrable track record as professional artists or arts organisations
- Organisations or individuals not resident/based in the Republic of Ireland
- Applicants who do not guarantee payment to artists in their original plans and contingency plans
- Members of the Council of National Cultural Institutions (CNCI) directly funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.
For more information, visit Arts Council.