ARTSCAPE DEIDRE FALVEYART IS ATTEMPTING take-off with the first Space Programme, Performance Corporation's highly unusual new residency programme, which will see architects, actors, choreographers, musicians and visual artists from all over the world collaborating to create new work.
A first-of-its-kind international theatre project, it's set to launch on April 7th and will gather a group of artists from fields as diverse as theatre, software design, urban scenography, music, film, choreography and visual art, aiming to spark new work, new thinking and new artistic synergies.
The programme runs from April 7th to 18th in the company's new home, Castletown House in Co Kildare. Jo Mangan, the company's artistic director, who is facilitating the workshop along with dramaturg Hanna Slättne, says that, having recently moved to Castletown, "we are finally in a position to kick off this programme, which is something we have wanted to do for a very long time. It is notoriously difficult to get the time and space to nurture a collaboration and allow new work to be brought to fruition. We hope that the Space Programme will be that time and space." And it is hoped to repeat the event in the near future.
Even before full details were announced, Performance Corporation got expressions of interest from Russia, the US, Algeria and Italy, and the participants are Russian choreographer Konstantin Grouss, French urban scenographer Nuria Montblanch, Northern Irish lighting designer Ciaran Bagnall, Irish performer Hilary O'Shaughnessy, Irish vocalist Irene O'Mara, Danish site-specific director Christine Fentz, Irish visual artists Suzanne Mooney and Mary Jo Gilligan, and Irish set and costume designer Sonia Haccius.
While the aim of the Space Programme is to give the artists space to grow and nurture their ideas, it's not simply a laboratory and the artists will be encouraged to generate ideas for work to be exhibited or performed in a public arena in the future.
Munster recognition
The Munster Literature Centre has issued what might be considered a call to poetic arms in asking for the submission of scholarly papers on the contemporary poets of Munster writing in either Irish or English, writes Mary Leland.
The intention, according to director Pat Cotter, is to redress the imbalance by which their work is overshadowed by the attention given particularly to the poets of Northern Ireland. This is not to deny the northerners' brilliance, but he feels that it is a point worth making that from this June there will be as many poets from Munster on the Faber publishing list as from Ulster. "The Munster writers are our brief," says Cotter. "There are particular groupings, as well as individuals, which deserve focus. The fields of Yeats, Joyce, Beckett and Kavanagh are a bit crowded, but University College Cork's Innti group, which revitalised writing in Irish with Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Micheal Davitt among others, and the contemporaneous writing in English from, for example, Maurice Riordan or Theo Dorgan, - these deserve academic respect and curiosity."
His list is a serious one, which includes Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Bernard O'Donoghue, Michael Hartnett and Brendan Kennelly, and makes its own argument in terms of influence and achievement. The accepted results of what it is hoped will be some genuinely original research will be published as an anthology late in 2009, and the contributors (Cotter says the writers can be based anywhere, and he has already received queries from California's Stanford university) will be paid, although it is not yet certain how much. The centre, which plans to produce one major publication each year, is hoping for a title-by-title grant from the Arts Council; this has already given €4,000 towards the publication of an anthology of French singer/songwriter poets, translated by Aidan Hayes, which was also sponsored by the French embassy in Dublin. The academic papers should be submitted in hard copy by October 31st to: the Contemporary Munster Poetry Criticism Project, The Munster Literature Centre, Frank O'Connor House, 84 Douglas Street,Cork, Ireland. More details on 021-4312955.
Rewarding relations
The deadline is looming for this year's Allianz Business to Arts Awards, with the closing date for nominations on March 28th. In what is an important year for the organisation that aims to foster a creative relationship between the arts and business - it's Business to Arts' 20th anniversary (and the 17th year of the awards) - it is reshaping the awards, with new categories to allow for more nominees. The awards are moving away from rewarding just sponsorship relationships to celebrate the full range of creative partnerships between business and the arts, including an award for corporate social responsibility programmes that include the arts, and an award for excellent practice in commissioning.
The stories behind the nominations are many and varied - from a business and an arts point of view - and illustrate the impact they have. For example, last year's winners of the €4,000 DAA award, Dunamaise Arts Centre in Portlaoise, used the money (along with sponsorship raised) to buy 40 violins and 10 cellos, which were recently given on loan as an instrument bank to two primary schools in the area. The instrument bank is a loan for a couple of years as schools raise money for lessons and to purchase instruments they can keep.
"The world of business is constantly changing and evolving, and organisations need to take a creative approach to adaptation," says Brendan Murphy, chief executive of Allianz Ireland. "Organisations can often view art support as a very narrow field, and feel if they are not a patron to an artist that they are not eligible for the awards, but it is great to see the new categories that have been introduced to the awards this year. The change reflects recent changes in the business world and will hopefully broaden people's perception of how the business world and the arts world can successful collaborate and integrate."
Stuart McLaughlin, chief executive of Business to Arts, commented that the new award categories were designed "to reflect the full range of creative partnerships that we see developing between artists, arts organisations and business".
For more information on the awards, or entry forms, call Business to Arts at 01-6725336, or see www.businesstoarts.ie. The deadline is Friday, March 28th for either businesses or arts organisations who wish to be considered.
There are a few days left to apply for the Live Family Portraits theatre workshop with Argentinian director Vivi Tellas, which will run from Monday, March 31st to Thursday, April 3rd at Project. Tellas is one of the most celebrated of Argentina's experimental theatre directors. His work, which is related to documentary, puts theatre in contact with other worlds, and traces theatrical elements in lives, situations or disciplines outside the theatre. In a departure from normal theatre workshop methods, participants can invite and involve their own family members to help build upon the "great theatrical themes" in family history: deception, appearance, secrets, betrayal, love and death.
Family members don't have to participate in the workshop every day, but need to be fairly flexible, and at the end of the workshop there'll be an informal presentation of the work. The workshop is in English and the fee is €120. Apply with CV and brief letter of interest to willie.white@project.ie by Wednesday.