A theatrical response to the housing crisis, an international arts festival for children under six, and plans to reinvigorate Dublin's James Joyce Street are among the projects which will share €800,000 earmarked by the Arts Council for its Making Great Art Work: Open Call scheme.
The council’s director , Orlaith McBride, said the seven successful projects – chosen from 133 applicants – represent the work of some of the most dynamic and interesting artists in Ireland.
“In their range and ambition they reaffirm the centrality of the arts and the importance of the voice of the artist in our country,” she said, adding that they address a number of important issues “from homelessness to the development of young children to the international movement of finance to borders and territories and the nature of our urban spaces”.
Selected by a jury which included Arts Council chair Sheila Pratschke, the director of the Edinburgh festival, Fergus Linehan, and Carsten Dufner, head of music and production at MDR German Public Broadcaster in Leipzig, the projects were chosen for their ambitious nature as well as their intention to engage with the public as audience members or as participants. The winning projects are as follows.
Wide Eyes Early Years Festival: four days of theatre and dance performances for young children and their families, created by Europe’s finest producers of Early Years work, to be presented by Baboró International Arts Festival for Children in Galway in spring 2018.
Crash Ensemble 20x20: 20 new works by 20 Irish and international composers in 10 locations across Ireland throughout 2017, to mark the Crash Ensemble's 20th year.
Where We Live: five "in-situ" plays on the theme of home and homelessness, created by Irish playwrights working with a range of host communities in Dublin, to be presented by Thisispopbaby during Dublin Theatre Festival 2017.
The Tree Line Project, curated by Oonagh Young and Mary Cremin: it aims to reinvigorate Dublin city centre's James Joyce Street by playing passages from Joyce's Ulysses on an outdoor tickertape LED screen, by planting a variety of indigenous trees mentioned in the novel's "Cyclops" episode, and by inviting local residents to participate in a series of street events.
Latitude by Marie Barrett: this site-specific visual arts project about identity within an era of shifting borders will be presented as a film and a series of temporary sculptural forms at Malin Head, Co Donegal and other cross-Border territories where lookout posts are sited.
The Visible by Gerard Byrne and Sven Anderson: a video installation by a selection of commissioned artists, which aims to interrogate the concept of “the visible” through references as diverse as international financial movements, marginalised peoples, disappearing nature and emerging science. The work will be presented in Ireland and abroad throughout 2017.
Rediscovering 18th-century Irish State music from Dublin Castle: Ireland’s first art music by Peter Whelan. A concert at Dublin Castle in August 2017, featuring the premiere of two newly-discovered 18th-century odes written for the “Irish State Musick”, aims to reconnect music of historical significance with its original location and animate Ireland’s heritage in classical music.
