The West's Awake Community Weekend, Creative Places Tuam. Image: Vance Lau for Create
A new chapter for Creative Places Tuam
News
Creative Places Tuam has secured Arts Council funding for 2026 and 2027, paving the way for a new phase of the community‑led arts programme under local leadership.
This programme of work has been instrumental for Create – we are proud to have led the project since January 2020, and to have inaugurated the now national Creative Places programme. After the success of the first two phases of the programme, management of Creative Places Tuam will transfer to Galway County Council, with a team of artists and arts workers from Tuam operating the project on a day to day basis.
Create’s Director Damien McGlynn says “we are thrilled to see the Creative Places Tuam programme go from strength to strength. This latest funding will ensure that Tuam, a town already steeped in arts and culture, will be able to support artists and community members to further create art which speaks to them, which reflects the place they know and the future they want to build together. We look forward to seeing further important work to embed culture in the life of the people of Tuam!”
With Create’s support, between 2020 and 2025 the Creative Places Tuam programme supported dozens of artists, engaged thousands of community members, offering residencies, commissions, festivals, public artworks, mentorship and project support and community conversations.
Standout projects included For our Grand(m)Others, Patching Tuam, The Match Factory, and Tuam Assembly, which each brought together local and visiting artists and the Tuam community to develop ideas and create meaningful art together; “The West’s Awake”, a multi-day festival of arts and culture across the town; “Dispatches from the Blue Door”, which brought news of Creative Places Tuam into the homes of 9,000 Tuam Herald readers monthly, Community Seeding and Taking Root funds; and The One Stop Shop print residency to name just a few.
Special thanks must go to Carolann Courtney, Programme Coordinator for her unwavering commitment to supporting the creative and cultural eco system of Tuam to continue to grow. We are grateful for her creativity, perseverance, committed advocacy and hard graft, which drove the Creative Places Tuam programme from 2020 to 2025.
Our final and heartfelt thanks must be extended to the people of and from Tuam and the surrounding area, who gave this programme their time, thoughts, dedication and creative endeavour. We are grateful to you for allowing Create to become a part of your cultural endeavours for the past six years. We look forward to continuing to support the arts in Tuam as part of our national commitment to bolstering and advocating for collaborative arts practice.
