Fingal County Council, Tyrone Guthrie Centre and Bealtaine Festival Residency Announced

Fingal County Council, in association with the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and the Bealtaine Festival, is pleased to announce two inaugural, month-long, residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre during May 2022. These residences aim to celebrate and support older artists at all stages of their careers working in literature and visual arts.

The residencies will offer a professional visual artist and a professional writer the opportunity to research or develop new work in response to the Bealtaine Festival theme of ‘Interdependence,’ with the potential, if desired, to present work during Bealtaine 2023. The award is open to writers and visual artists working in all disciplines, aged 50+, who were born, studied, or currently reside in the Fingal administrative area. Fingal Arts Office, the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and the Bealtaine Festival welcome and encourage applications from artists from diverse cultural or minority backgrounds.

The residencies aim to address Fingal Arts goals, through its Arts Plan 2020 – 2025, of: connecting people and ideas; enabling excellence and fostering experimentation and risk taking.  These residencies similarly support the Bealtaine Festivals aim of celebrating creative ageing, and representation in the arts of and by older people.  This initiative also supports the three organisations aim to foster the professional development of artists in their ongoing practice.

The one-month long residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, located in the beautiful, tranquil setting of County Monaghan will provide an ideal environment for the successful candidates to focus on research or the development of new work.

The Mayor of Fingal, Cllr Seána Ó Rodaigh commented, “I welcome this new opportunity for older artists to work in this fabulous setting and envision this award will be of great benefit to them allowing them time and resources to research and test out new ideas.”

Speaking about the award, Chief Executive of Fingal County Council, AnnMarie Farrelly said, “As part of the Council’s ongoing commitment to professional artists, we are delighted to partner with the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and the Bealtaine Festival on this new residency initiative which aims to support and celebrate older Fingal artists from all diverse backgrounds.”

Director of Services, Emer O’ Gorman said, “The Council is committed to encouraging and fostering opportunities for artists and is proud to support this exciting new opportunity.”

The residency will take place from 1 May – 31 May 2022. Closing date for receipt of applications is Friday 25 March 2022 at 4pm.

For further information and to apply please see Fingal County Council, Tyrone Guthrie Centre and Bealtaine Festival Residency Award 2022                             

For information see:  www.fingalarts.ie/news or www.fingal.ie/arts  www.tyroneguthrie.ie                             www.bealtainefestival.ie