Up to £150,000 is available for each Council area in Northern Ireland (NI) under a new fund to increase the role of arts in community planning, and funding under placemaking may be particularly relevant for IHBC NI members working within Local Authorities, while the deadline for applications is 31st March 2017.
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland writes:
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland is challenging local authorities to increase their investment in the arts with the offer to double their investment with match funding. ‘If you’re in, we’re in’. The Arts Council is offering match funding of £1.5 million to incentivise investment in the arts in relation to the new powers conferred upon local authorities for Community Planning.
The Arts Council Challenge Fund will embed arts policy and programming in the development of Community Plans and their emerging themes, including economic regeneration, community relations, social cohesion, tourism and health.
Up to £150,000 is available to each council area
- the Arts Council will match local authority spending on the arts
- match funding may be available each year for up to three years
- investment must be new and additional to current spending
The deadline for applications is 31st March 2017.
The examples presented below are just some of the ways in which the arts can address the emerging themes in the development of Community Plans:
- The Arts & Interculturalism- The Arts Council’s Intercultural Arts Programme continues to support projects across Northern Ireland. One of the most recent projects to receive support is Beyond Skin’s, Orchestre des Réfugiés et Amis. Translating as, Orchestra Refugees and Friends, the Belfast-based project which will run over the next 18 months, includes a social, creative space for artists in Refugee or Asylum status to regularly meet, engage and experience different cultures whilst working with professional musicians.
- The Arts & Health + Well-being- The Arts Council’s pioneering Arts & Older People Programme has supported upwards of 100 projects throughout Northern Ireland since 2009. The programme aims to strengthen the voice of older people and promote positive mental health and well-being through the arts. The strategic themes of the programme include combatting isolation and loneliness, working to promote positive health and wellbeing and providing creative opportunities for older people living in disadvantaged and/or marginalised rural and urban areas across Northern Ireland.
- The Arts & Placemaking -The first project to receive support under the Arts Council Challenge Fund is the Seamus Heaney HomePlace literary centre opening in Bellaghy this September. The award of £150,000 was made to Mid Ulster District Council to help support the development of a high calibre arts programme for the centre.
- The Arts & Community Cohesion- The Arts Council’s Building Peace through the Arts Programme had, at its core, the ability to bring communities together, through arts led engagement. The programme which ran between 2013 and 2015 helped borth urban and rural centres across Northern Ireland experience the transformative power of the arts. Significant new works of arts, inspired by and created by the communities around them were unveiled in city centres, in border towns, along river banks and in shared community spaces.
Application forms and guidance notes
Download the Arts Council Challenge Fund Information Brochure
