Arts Council of Northern Ireland Hosts ‘Accessing EU Funding for the Arts’ Conference
01/06/2012
Pictured at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s ‘Accessing EU Funding for the Arts’ conference were (l-r front row): Will Chamberlain (Belfast Community Circus School); Frank Duffy (OFMDFM), Debra Mulholland (Arts Council of Northern Ireland), Bernice Sweeney (Youth Council NI) and (l-r back row): Christoph Jankowski (UK Cultural Contact Point, Visiting Arts), Max Beer (The Playhouse Theatre) and Una Nic Eoin (Prime Cut).
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland recently (30th May) hosted a free information session on EU Culture Programme funding opportunities. The event proved extremely popular with over 70 delegates from a wide range of arts and cultural organisations across Northern Ireland attending the event at The MAC, Belfast.
Participants heard from a number of local case studies, including Belfast Community Circus School, Prime Cut and The Playhouse Theatre, who discussed the arts projects that they are successfully delivering as a result of EU funding and shared their learning from applying for EU funding.
Funding opportunities do still exist under the current EU programmes for Culture, Lifelong Learning and Youth in Action. Christoph Jankowski, UK Cultural Contact Point for the Culture Programme, provided information on the opportunities within the Culture Programme (2007-2013), while Bernice Sweeney from Youth Council NI shared information on the Youth in Action Programme. New EU programmes for 2014-2020 will include €1.8billion for culture and media and €19 billion for education, training, youth and sport.
For those organisations serious about applying for the Culture Programme during 2012, there was also the opportunity to book a one-to-one session with the UK Cultural Contact point during the afternoon clinic. These ten-minute surgeries were aimed at organisations that had a project in mind and had already taken steps to identify at least one partner.
The Arts Council offers a resource called ‘Creative Partnerships’ which provides a summary guide to the EU funding landscape. It tells you where to look and how to develop partnerships, and includes a range of useful links and contacts. A supplementary document, called ‘International Cultural Network Links’, highlights over 300 international cultural networks as starting points to identify potential partners. Both documents are available to download from the Arts Council website at: http://www.artscouncil-ni.org/subpages/strategyandpolicies.htm#creative
