AIC Scheme 2020 Round Two: Successful Recipients

Congratulations to all successful applicants to the AIC Scheme (Round Two) in 2020, who come from a range of art forms and contexts.

Read more about each recipient, and their planned course of work, below.

Research and Development Award

Alisha Doody will work with the Stairlings Collective on the research and development of an intergenerational podcast series exploring trans culture. The podcast will be developed by The Stairlings Collective in collaboration with the trans community, in an effort to explore invisible histories and culture through intergenerational dialogue and archival materials. (Co. Roscommon)

Angela Monks McDonagh will engage with residents of Stoneybatter (Dublin City), to research and develop work considering stories housed within the people and buildings of the community. Angela will collaborate with staff and customers of the local shop, looking at stories shared over shop counters, the exchange of goods and conversation.

Gareth Gowran will collaborate with women who are accessing Rialto Community Drug team’s services (Dublin City) to develop a visual language to describe their experiences as people coping with addiction related issues. This will be achieved through dialogue with the group and by using a narrative based work approach to create a visual vocabulary that can be subsequently employed through different media.

Sylvia Cullen will work within Shelton Abbey Open Prison (Co. Wexford) to research and develop Creative Writing for Podcasts, in collaboration with prisoners and staff. The research will explore how artistic proposals can complement the current education programme, working towards a podcast series with the Shelton Writers.

Research and Development Award with Mentoring

Limerick artists Ann Blake and Joanne Ryan, in partnership with cultural resource centre Ormston House, will collaborate with the residents of Wolfe Tone Street in Limerick City to develop an ambitious new promenade performance inspired by the life of Hollywood star, Constance Smith (1929-2003). They will consult with mentor Donal Gallagher, an expert in community-engaged, promenade performance, throughout this process.

Mairead Delaney will work with Survivors of Symphysiotomy in Dublin City. The Research and Development phase will involve in-person interviews with survivors, mutually determining how these encounters might grow into collaborative making which considers embodied experience, the polyvocal and fragments of testimony as modes of affective transmission of traumatic memory and suppressed histories. She will be mentored by artist and curator Michelle Browne.

Research and Development Award for an Artist from a Minority Ethnic or Migrant Background

Ala Buisir intends to work with Muslim women during her R&D award, exploring through a visual media how they can debunk the stereotypes and assumptions made about them in both Ireland and the wider world. Shared commonalities will be deduced through open discussions, to be expressed though creative means. She will be mentored by Laragh Pittman.

Recent Graduate Research and Development Award

Sanaa El Habbash will engage with the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign and displaced Palestinian women, to transform stories of personal journeys and our close connection to food into tactile objects showcasing women’s stories of life back home and what brought them to their new home.

Project Realisation Award

Clown Chorus and artist Veronica Coburn will develop a programme of red nose performance work, inspired by the collaborators’ stories, songs and life experiences, for performance in community spaces in compliance with Covid regulations.  This programme will be developed and refined through a series of workshops facilitated by Veronica Coburn.

Dublin City libraries will collaborate with artist Silvia Loeffler on a collaborative installation to promote the value of free cultural space in the heart of a dense retail sector. It will pivot on the sense of a library, a reminder to the viewer of where they are and the potential that a free place such as a library can bring to them in their lives.

SEED Collective will engage with artists Grace Wilentz and Felicia Olusanya to develop a publication, unlike that which is currently available, that is guided by a diverse steering committee of young migrant and ethnic minority creators. The creators – writers, artists and craftspeople – will collaborate on common themes, responding to each other’s work to foster co-creation.

Smashing Barriers will work with artist Kate Harris, developing their research into verbatim theatre by contextualising interview texts gathered by the Smashing Barriers performers within the history of the disability rights movement. They will collaborate with dramaturge Pamela McQueen to devise new theatre bringing together personal and political material into a powerful play about the struggle for disability rights in Ireland.

Sound On! is a creative sound project by a group of men and women from Saint John of God Liffey Services in collaboration with artists Dr Sinead McCann and Alan James Burns. The project will provide access to artistic processes for adults with an intellectual disability, and will creatively explore the theme of happiness using the human voice, accessible recording and editing software applications and 3D spatial audio technology.

St Cronan’s Association in Co Tipperary will work with artist Tess Leak, puppeteer Eoin Lynch, and song-writer Liz Clark to create and perform a cross-artform work “Friendship in Lockdown: A Song Cycle with Puppets!” The work will culminate in a short film of the performance, bringing together online footage and short films recorded individually by participants with support from staff.

Panel

Emma-Lucy O’Brien,  CEO and Artistic Director VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art
Tara McGowan, Creative director of Cairde Sligo Arts Festival
Jijo Sebastian, Film maker
Melatu Uche Okorie, Arts Council (Chair)

In attendance

Jane O’Rourke, Create
Áine Crowley, Create
Karen Whelan, Arts Council