AIC Scheme Artist Mentoring Award Information Session with John Conway and Silvina Sisterna 

Create is pleased to announce an information session on applying to the AIC Scheme Artist Mentoring Award with John Conway, previous Artist Mentor Panel member and Silvina Sisterna, Mentee (2023). This event will be held online on the 9th April.

About the Mentoring Award 

The Mentoring Award sits within a suite of offerings under the Artist in the Community Scheme (AIC Scheme). It aims to offer capacity building and arts practice development for collaborative, socially engaged artists. Through the Mentoring Award, artists from the Artist Mentor Panel will be available as mentors. There will be five artist mentors and five artist mentees. 

This opportunity is for emerging collaborative, socially engaged artists or artists who have a midcareer/established individual arts practice and are transitioning into collaborative, socially engaged arts who are seeking support from a critical friend/guide as they develop their practice. 

The award is aimed at  

• artists who find themselves on the margins and feel they are underrepresented in the field of collaborative, socially engaged arts, for example due to displacement or migration, disability  
• artists who are experiencing a particular practice-based challenge in developing their collaborative, socially engaged arts practice 

For the five selected artist mentees, the award offers an eight-month period of capacity building and arts practice development through dialogue with an experienced collaborative, socially engaged artist mentor.  

We strongly advise potential applicants to attend this session.  

About this event 

The information session is about answering any questions you might have about making an application to the AIC Mentoring Award. The session will feature previous mentor John Conway and mentee Silvina Sisterna, both paired in 2023, who will speak about their own practice and journey as a collaborative, socially engaged artists and explore some of the principles of collaborative socially engaged arts practice. The session will be followed with a Q&A. 

Some of the areas that will be explored include: 

• Understanding collaborative, socially engaged methodologies beyond ‘traditional’ models such as arts facilitation / workshops / teaching classes 

• Sustaining the practice, with both artists briefly introducing a recent project 

• Describing their experience on the Artist Mentoring Award 

• Reflections on mentoring; the benefits and learnings 

• Tips for submitting successful applications 

John Conway is one of Ireland’s foremost socially engaged visual artists. His work is characterised by innovative multi-disciplinary projects produced in response to sensitive and challenging community contexts. His projects occur across art forms including sculpture, installation, moving image, audio, theatre, virtual reality, publication, and curation. His prolific working process is characterized by experimentation with sculptural and artistic forms, acute listening, sensitivity to context and a robust interrogation of artistic processes across collaborative contextual work and formalised gallery output. 

Silvina Sisterna is a multidisciplinary artist based in Dublin, originally from Argentina. Her practice focuses on collaboration with migrant women, using photography, writing and moving images to empower and reflect shared identities. She co-founded the Nepantla Collective in 2023, leading Points of Encounter, a ten-month project culminating in an exhibition at Photo Museum Ireland. Rooted in Gloria Anzaldúa’s theories, her work explores the experiences of women from post-colonial backgrounds, fostering critical thinking through conceptual art. Through participatory methodologies, she creates art that sparks dialogue, amplifies underrepresented voices, and engages with pressing social and political issues.