Artists receive grants to create projects showcasing work for new audiences

Four Northern Ireland artists are to benefit from funding to support new projects that will showcase their work to local and international audiences.

The Major Individual Awards (MIA) worth up to £15,000 are being presented by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland with National Lottery funding.

Poet Padraig Regan, visual artist and painter Pádraig Mac Cana, author Bernie McGill and inclusive theatre maker and director Andrew Standford will each receive the award to create new works.

They are the highest-value awards bestowed by the Arts Council each year.

Regan will use the award to begin work on a collection of poems exploring geology and how poetry and language can relate to the natural world.

McGill will use her award to create a work of fiction based on Eleonora Giulia Amalia Duse, an Italian actress active around the 1890s-1920s. As part of the award, she will spend time researching Duse at the Cini Foundation and Museo Civico di Asolo in Italy.

Stanford will use his MIA award to create “Home in a Boat!”, an immersive sensory theatre adventure that families can engage with from their own homes.

Mac Cana’s will produce a series of paintings that confront the lingering historic trauma of the Northern Ireland Troubles. As part of the MIA award, he will undertake research at the British War Museum, the British Library, the Imperial war Museum and on-site locations in London.

The director of arts development at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Gilly Campbell, said: “Congratulations to all four artists in receiving the Major Individual Artists award.

“These awards will enable these enormously talented artists to undertake a substantial piece of new work and reflects the Arts Council’s commitment to creating the conditions in which to grow artistic talent through experimentation and innovation.”

The four join a list of artists who have previously benefited from the Major Individual Artist award.

The MIA form part of the wider Support for the Individual Artist Programme, which is supported with funding from the National Lottery and administered by the Arts Council annually.