AIC Scheme 2022 Round Two: Successful Recipients

Congratulations to all successful applicants to the AIC Scheme (Round Two) in 2022, 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

Dr Sinead McCann and Alan James Burn will work with service users of St John of Gods Liffey Services on a series of creative workshops and discussions to respond to, experiment with and re-imagine three sound artworks they have previously made together. These sound artworks originally made and presented on-line will be the creative starting point to generate ideas and plans for a new inclusive multi-sensory exhibition.

Wing Sei Yvonne (Eve) Li will work with female Direct Provision Residents , refugees & minority ethnic women in Donegal to share stories and create theatre through their chosen performance medium such as playwriting, storytelling, drama, dance and music. The project goal is about developing their artistic skills and learning new ones through theatre (storytelling and drama).

Silvina Sisterna and Nepantla Collective will explore themes of intersectional gender and female empowerment through photography. The aim is to build a community that can serve as a space for support and resistance through photography.

Sadhbh Lawlor will engage in a three-month research period with a Community Reps Forum group who work with Clondalkin Local Drug and Alcohol Task Force. The goal is to examine the importance and value of community activism to find the starting point for a significant piece of work. This will be achieved through a minimum of 8 facilitated sessions and field trips, meeting the group where they’re at and fostering creative discussion.

Lucy Hyland will work with Headway, Ballincollig, Cork to explore the simple technique of hand weaving as a way of sharing and expressing stories of Acquired Brain Injury (ABI). Lusy will work with clients of Headway to design a hand weaving workshop with the aim of sharing their stories and considering possible avenues for a larger storytelling project.

Mary Duffin will work on developing a series of tailor-made workshops with Naas Arch Club, a social club for adults with intellectual disabilities. This will create a space for all participants to express their point of view on life using Image Theatre, allowing them to move past communication barriers & other expressive limitations on people with intellectual disabilities

Tom Noone will engage with art educators in Drogheda who work directly with ‘marginalised’ individuals at a personal, communal and socio-structural level. This work will amalgamate Development Education and Social Arts Practice through participatory art to explore socio-cultural issues, environmental struggles and conditional-contextual barriers in the community.

Andrea Scott will develop a script collaboratively with The Elders, a group of older adult theatre makers, using workshops to develop a fresh perspective on Teresa Deevy, an important but overlooked Irish playwright that The Elders have a strong interest in.

Research and Development Award with Mentoring

Rosie Norton will work with Safe Home Ireland on weekly workshops taking a creative path with the objective in allowing the group to discuss their thoughts, memories while creating an art piece of their liking. The aim of this work is to break down social isolation and loneliness among older people in a creative way. Rosie will have mentoring support by Mick Smyth.

Veronica Santorum will engage local people with the heritage of Lough Gur, helping to combat rural social isolation among a dispersed, older community. Using local plants they will weave a connection between community, place and history at Lough Gur with a particular emphasis on boats such as coracles. Given large numbers of visitors to the area, there is a risk that tourism pressure can fracture the community and that people feel removed from decision-making processes. This collaborative project restores a level of engagement and control over their own locality. Veronica will work with mentor Lynn Kirkham.

Sophia Tamburrini will explore collaborative creative processes with the residents of Coolmine Therapeutic Community to imagine ways in which they can create artistic responses that are evocative of their lived experience and the issues that affect them. This work will be supported by mentoring by John Conway.

Majella Munro will partner with EPIC to build a community of participants who are repatriates from the Irish disapora; facilitating exploratory workshops on representing lived experiences through theatre to verify engagement; and agreeing a project plan to guide and fund future collaboration with this community, with the support of mentor Bernadette O’Reilly.

Kathryn Maguire will engage Sligo Field Club, Sligo Community Archaeology Project and Sligo Neolithic Landscapes to research and learn about the geological events that created Sligo, with the community and with expert advice led by Irish Geological Association.Together they will develop and research a new art work that shall involve a community that shares a commonality – the love of stone, soil and Earth ‘Geophilia’. Kathryn will be mentored by Vaari Claffey.

Niamh Gibbons will work with Calli Collective to work collaboratively in creative food sharing, creating new social imaginaries and space for exchange of knowledge through food, and engagement with local communities to research and exchange knowledge of shared food cultures and agricultural heritages. This work will be supported by mentorship by Colette Lewis.

Thomas McCarthy will work with the Recovery through Arts Drama and Education (RADE) community to research collaborative community arts practices using the podcast medium, resulting in a series of podcasts for broadcast on web & radio. Thomas will be supported in this work by mentor Brian Greene.

HK Ní Shioradáin intends to partner with AsIAm, Ireland’s National Autistic Charity, to explore non-verbal storytelling through music with the autistic community. This will be facilitated through workshops, with mentorship by Justin Grounds. These workshops will enable the community to creatively express themselves through a non-verbal artform and ensure autistic experiences are heard.

Recent Graduate Research and Development Award

Jialin Long will work with Sherkin Island Community to establish a community-based collaborative art project by building connections with the community, actively engaging with the local people, and finding the visual voice that represents this community. Jialin will receive mentoring support by Aoife Herrity.

Project Realisation Award

Western Traveller & Intercultural Development (Bru Bhride) and artist Martina Passman

will work together to develop a permanent Arts Academy in Bru Bhride which will provide opportunities to members of the Traveller Community, young and old to further their experience and understanding of the Arts. The academy will have a program of events specific to the needs and desire of the Community.

Fatima Groups United will collaborate with artist Veronica Dyas on a new site specific Theatre Production exploring the gentrification of Dublin City. The work will be delivered as a series of performative protests. This work will build on a strong track record of high quality collaborative arts practice & existing partnerships.

Wildsong Ensemble will work with artist Laura Hyland, using weekly workshops to develop skill as singers, improvisers, and to devise a new performance in response to acoustic spaces (ball alley & gallery of Wexford Arts Centre (WAC)), and their spatial and visual potential. This project empowers people to sing, to explore innate artistry together, and to transform experience into performance.

Friends of St. Anne’s Road Pocket Park and artist Sophie von Maltzan will enact a staged inquiry into community engagement and the role of the public space, through a series of immersive, intergenerational community workshops & seminars with artists and professionals. The objective is to empower the community to reflect and voice their experiences with the Pocket Park and therefore raises awareness of the importance but also the difficulties that projects like this encounter, within the concept of sustainable and resilient cities.

Afghan Community of Ireland and artist Barialai Khoshhal will capture the lived experience of the Afghan community in Ireland using the mediums of photography and storytelling, capturing the person’s life history and present. The project aims to capture the variety and diversity among members of the Afghan community in Ireland, a long-standing community, and show how they have contributed to Irish society, through the work of the artist in the mediums of photography and sound recordings.

Athlone Family Resource Centre and artists Kara Richardson and Bianca Fachel will collaborate on Bean Feasa, a project that shares the wisdom of women from diverse social and ethnic backgrounds through song, giving mature women the opportunity to compose and record music in an all-female environment where music is a collaboration not a competition. Bean Feasa is a music project that celebrates mature women and everything they have learned about life on their way to getting where they are today.