AIC Artist Mentoring Award
2019 AIC Scheme Summer School on Cultural Diversity and Collaborative Practice. Photo: Joseph Carr
The Mentoring Award is part of a suite of offerings under the Artist in the Community Scheme (AIC). 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.
The Artist Mentor Panel is made up of experienced collaborative, socially engaged practitioners who specialise in a range of artforms, and who have worked with diverse communities from across Ireland and beyond. Each brings in-depth knowledge of the field, and a deep awareness of key considerations when working with communities, including in sensitive settings and where projects are addressing significant social issues.
Current and previous mentors include Ruairí Ó’Donnabháin, Tomasz Madajczak, Eve Olney, Domini Thorpe, Silvina Sisterna, Dr. Sinead McCann, Alan James Burns, Oluwatobi Balogun, Grace Dyas, Séamus Nolan, John Conway, Kate O’Shea, Feidlim Cannon, Deirdre O’Mahony, Cathy Coughlan, Michelle Browne and Aisling Byrne.
In addition, the Artist Mentoring Award is supported by a group of artists who operate as satellite mentors, facilitators, trainers and advisors to the programme. These include artists Marie Brett, Colette Lewis, Catherine Young, Vanessa Daws, Dragana Jurisis, Evelyn Broderick, Dr. Fiona Whelan, Jijo Sebastian, Tara Carroll, Alice Rekab, Frank Berry, Marielle MacLeman and Dr Ciaran Smyth of Vagabond Reviews, as well as Viviana Checchia, Director, Void Derry, Kim McAleese, Director, Edinburgh Art Festival, Irene O Mara, Lecturer in Speech & Drama, MTU, Ryan J. Matthews-Robinson, founder of Poetic Unity, and Jenny Salmean, Deveron Projects.
