AIC Scheme 2023 Round One: Successful Recipients

Congratulations to all successful applicants to the AIC Scheme (Round One) in 2023, 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

Tara Baoth Mooney will engage with Cancer Care West to identity breast cancer survivors who would like to co-devise a body of collaborative work based on their own stories. This initial research phase will create a safe and meaningful environment where potentially, creative work can take place.

Marie Brett and a community of interest particular to Holy Wells (healers, folklorists, farmers, other interested people) will collectively research and develop ideas, potential and possible ways to create a future collaborative art project and work, which conceptually explores ideas of Holy Wells, healing and cultural lore This will involve field-trips, research activity events and developmental actions, both indoors and outside.

Aideen Connolly, Winifred Mc Nulty and North Leitrim/ Sligo Townlands group will collaborate on The Biography of Objects, a research project which will explore the almost disregarded household objects that are handed down, an archaeology of the everyday. The objects will be explored through art, writing and story and this will give an innovative and imaginative voice to the culture, the making, the resilience of the people of North Leitrim & North Sligo

John Lillis will engage with Scariff Bay FM and the Scariff Library to spend a sustained period of time researching stories and historical events unique to the community of place (East Clare) and identifying how these could be suitably adapted to form audio artefacts. The local community will collaborate, creating an artistic framework from which members of the community can research, produce and record the local stories that help formulate the cultural identity of East Clare.

Sarah Ellen Lundy will undertake a period of research and development with the communities which use Bundoran Community Center with a view to recruiting an intergenerational group who demonstrates interest in developing an eco art project, using the resources of the Community Centre, in order to creatively engender interest in the unique flora and fauna of the Donegal Bay Special Area of Conservation which Bundoran represents.

Research and Development Award with Mentoring

William Casey will use his R&D award to research and talk to mentors and members of the Traveller community to put on a musical theatre production called Traveller Culture in Motion, which aims to showcase the struggles and experiences of the Traveller community in Ireland through a combination of rap, dance, and storytelling. The production will incorporate Traveller ways of dancing, Traveller modes of music, and Traveller stories, and will be performed at halting sites and other locations significant to the Traveller community. William will be mentored by Sasha Khron, accomplished and highly skilled aerial dancer.

Aoife Concannon will collaborate with postpartum young women from Dublin 8 via Core Youth Services, exploring the relationship with the body in the context of childbearing. Audio testimonials will create a soundscape of voices, with further exploration in movement, creating moving choreographies of stories. This work is important in the context of bodily autonomy, and giving a voice to young women from marginalised communities.

Aoife will be mentored by Evelyn Broderick, multidisciplinary artist.

Joanna Hopkins will research & develop creative engagement and methods of collaborating with residents and carers of a local nursing home, using plant folklore & combined knowledge to build an exploratory, collaborative relationship. The process will be highly accessible & participant led, using oral and sensory explorations of native Irish plants, focusing on medicinal and nourishment properties. Joanna will be mentored by establish collaborative artist John Conway.

Olwyn Lyons and Mia DiChiaro will engage with Macushla Dance Club in an R&D process, responding to members’ desire to go beyond weekly classes by trialling new creative workshops, laying the groundwork for future community-led dance projects. Olwyn and Mia will be mentored by Philip Connaughton, professional dancer and choreographer.

Project Realisation Award

Headway Brain Injury Services and Support will work with Lucy Hyland to explore the simple technique of hand weaving as a way of sharing and expressing stories of Acquired Brain Injury. During a previous R&D award, Headway clients participated in a 4 week workshop aimed at learning the process and exploring how weaving could become an alternative means of expression. Taking feedback from the clients, the aim going forward is to work closely with the clients to design and develop an extended hand weaving workshop with the aim of creating a combined project.

Limelight Creative Arts and Sorsha Galvin will create an animated film, capturing the thoughts and opinions of the members of Limelight around many different issues. This work builds on previous work involving drawing, collage and stop motion animation.

Limerick City Build with Grace Dyas will collaborate to unlock their artistic potential and develop film making skills to make a film about the group’s experiences of abandonment, absence, loss and social exclusion. When a man doesn’t show up on a building site, or to an appointment he is called a ‘No Show’. He can get a reputation as unreliable, a perpetual no show. Very rarely do people ask ‘Why?’. Why did he not show up? Equally we don’t ask who has abandoned him or let him down? Who were the first ‘No Shows’ in his life? This film will explore these questions.

Nepantla Collective and Silvina Sisterna plan to create a photographic body of work that allows them to creatively express and critically think about experiences of migrant women. Through photographic workshops, talks, research and dialogical exchange, the collective intends to make a final exhibition that is both visually and conceptually powerful.

Women’s Solidarity Group and Eve Olney intend to pursue an arts-led approach to self-organizing a community programme, creating artwork for exhibition and dissemination that will launch and highlight their cause. They will collaborate on Productive Encounter workshops, producing a series of handstitched banners and a limited edition of  screen-printed posters to be auctioned to fund a new women’s programme and one day symposium with r.a.g.e. and Radical Institute on this topic.