Balor of the Evil Eye & The Sidhe

Interactive Stories for Children – Balor of the Evil Eye

Inspired by the stories of old – two days of imagining.  Artist Dympna Cunningham and Storyteller / Artist Wayne O Connor work together guiding children into a creative art session while setting the stage with myths and legends. A different story and artwork will be produced each day.

Sligo County Council Arts Plan 2020-2025

Click here to download and complete survey: Sligo Arts Plan Survey

Introduction

Sligo is home to many thriving and connected communities of artists, creative people and organisations, working in a diverse range of forms and genre. They are visible and recognised for the quality of their thinking, work and contribution to society. The social and economic benefits they bring to our communities are understood and valued. People of all ages and from different types of communities from all parts of the county can have deep and meaningful engagement with arts and creativity.

Now and in the future, this arts plan will underpin the work of artists and creative people through both  financial and empathetic support, so that they have time and space to develop their practice and produce thoughtful, inspiring, high quality work.  The Arts Office of Sligo County Council will be central to this and is referred to as Sligo Arts Office in this survey.

We are surveying the Sligo community, arts and culture providers and supporters as a first step toward identifying arts community need, goals and priorities for the ultimate development of a comprehensive county arts and culture plan.

So far, our conversations with stakeholders have resulted in a number of identifiable priorities for the forthcoming arts plan:

1. The need to appoint an arts officer to lead out and represent the arts at local and national levels. This is seen as essential in terms of driving the development of the arts over the next 5 years.
2. Artist’s workspaces – artists need spaces in which to work and provision of studios would address this need. Security of tenure and fair rents should feature in any plan to develop artists’ workspaces.
3. Direct project, awards, bursaries to artists – these are essential to enabling artists to create work and to make a living in Sligo. Artists work is being considered in context i.e. artist as citizen, creator, economic and social stakeholder, entrepreneur. Openness to working with Enterprise Boards and to harness other funding streams and opportunities has been a feature of artists work and will be strengthened in this arts plan.
4. Public art – new possibilities in public art/ art in the public realm will be explored across disciplines and public services to build on Sligo’s considerable reputation in inventive and creative use of public art resources
5. New ways of working – Sligo is home to a range of high quality arts organisations, venues and festivals e.g. Chamber Music Festival with the Vogler Quartet, Cairde, Yeats Summer School, Blue Raincoat, Model Niland etc. The former arts plan sought ways of working with and through these partners and in the new arts plan these relationships will be strengthened and enhanced with additional resources and innovations.

The survey will help us to build a comprehensive picture of the arts in the county and we would, very much, appreciate your participation.

Above all, we look to forward to sharing the results from these surveys and the outcome of our deliberations in Sligo’s new arts plan which will be published in the autumn.

Please forward this survey via email to artsforsligo@gmail.com by 10^th July 2019.