The Arts Council has apologised to 141 artists told they were being awarded grants of €25,000 only for the offer to be withdrawn minutes later.
Applicants received an email from the council stating they were successful for the grant through the Next Generation Artists’ Award. In a communication sent this afternoon at 4pm, applicants were congratulated and told that instructions would follow for them to draw down the money from Friday.
At 4.07pm another email was sent from Arts Council grants and awards officer Gillian Drew saying: “Please accept our apologies, an administrative error which resulted in an incorrect decision email being sent to you on our recent Next Generation application. Please disregard this email, the correct email will be sent after 4.30pm today.”
A council spokeswoman apologised “unreservedly” to the applicants for the error and admitted the council was getting a lot of irate correspondence from artists who were deeply disappointed by the gaffe.
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She said it was down to “human error on a system” and that the email which erroneously congratulated the artists involved had been sent from the Arts Council database. “It’s regrettable, but … everybody was notified very quickly that a mistake had been made.”
Disappointed artists
Writer Bobby Aherne, who had applied for the fund, tweeted: “Big thanks to the Arts Council for e-mailing me at 4pm to say I’d been awarded a €25,000 grant, and then e-mailing me ten minutes later to say ‘whoops, nope, admin error!’”
Fellow writer Daniel Ffrench responded: “I’m after getting the same email with the wrong application number on it. I rang the head office and apparently [it] has been emailed out to all applicants so I’m not sure what’s going on.”
One artist, who had applied unsuccessfully before and asked not to be named, said for seven minutes he thought a “huge, career-changing moment had happened. The 25 grand would fund a year of life as an artist. There is a lot of prestige around that award. It felt like acceptance. That an organisation with so many staff members could make such an incredible mistake is unacceptable, especially in the week that is in with what is happening with RTÉ.”
