Arts Council of Northern Ireland Mapping Exercise
presented to Culture, Arts & Leisure Committee
There are three artform departments in the Arts Council. Creative Arts includes, for example, literature, publishing, set-dancing, sculpture, story-telling, painting, multi-media art, mumming, photography, architecture and traditional music.
Performing Arts includes, for example, orchestral music, youth dance, opera, drama, choirs and jazz.
In Strategic Development, there are Community Arts, Education & Training and special responsibilities for liaising with local government, arts & disability initiatives, cultural tourism and Artists in Schools and youth clubs.
Each of these departments has a specialist advisory panel drawn from the arts constituency (artists, arts managers etc) which helps assess applications. In addition, there is a special Working Party on Architecture and a panel devoted to Cultural Diversity. The Cultural Diversity Panel arose out of the Council’s increasing support for what is becoming known as ‘language arts’, that is arts practised through the medium of languages other than English (Irish and Ulster-Scots spring immediately to mind). The Panel has a broader remit, however, and is a means of encouraging and developing applications from both language and ethnic minorities in Northern Ireland.
In a very direct visual way, I want firstly to illustrate the breadth of Arts Council funding over the range of our three major funding channels and the Artist in the Community Scheme:
Click on underlined links above to view details
