Opportunity: Artist in the Community Scheme

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?

The Arts Council’s Artist in the Community Scheme, managed by Create, offers awards to enable artists and communities of place and/or interest to work together on projects. The scheme also offers an annual bursary, as well as residencies and a summer school. The 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.

The aim of the Artist in the Community Scheme is to encourage meaningful collaboration between communities of place and/or interest and artists. Create defines community in the broadest sense of the word, however for the Artist in the Community 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.

There will be an information session on 27 August and 4 September to learn more about the scheme. The information session is about answering any questions you might have about making an application to the scheme. It’s also about sharing experience of developing and delivering a collaborative project through the scheme. If you are an artist or a community organisation interested in the Artist in the Community Scheme but don’t know where to start, come talk to Create.

The closing date for applications is 30 September.

Image: Pleasc, Fibín. A previous AIC Scheme Project Realisation award recipient. Photo: Seán T Ó Meallaigh