Dublin Fringe Festival

Dublin Fringe Festival is home to bold ideas, brave performing arts and adventurous audiences.

A curated, multi-disciplinary festival and year-round organisation, Dublin Fringe Festival is a platform for the best new, emerging Irish arts companies and a showcase for the finest international contemporary arts. For artists, through the festival programme and our year-round artist support scheme FRINGE LAB, Dublin Fringe facilitates opportunities to innovate, cross boundaries and strengthen the conditions in which they work.

VISUAL Carlow

Visual is one of Ireland’s leading contemporary art spaces situated in the heart of Carlow Town, with four world class gallery spaces and a 320-seat performance space. Enriching, inspiring and improving the everyday through art as an international hub for realising the value of contemporary arts practice.

Visual are rooted locally but retain a national and international focus. They passionately believe that the arts have a vital role to play in cultural, social and economic development, and that access to meaningful engagement with well-being, self-expression, social inclusion, creativity and enterprise, both in individuals and in societies.  

They are committed to providing meaningful access to and advocacy for contemporary artistic practice of the highest quality through their programming, events and activities. In addition, they are committed to developing the sustainability of artistic practice both locally and nationally through the ways in which they work and programme. 

They are also committed to identifying and removing physical, social and economic barriers to accessing their work, and to support, foster and provide opportunities for arts participation within the community.

Live Collision

Established in 2009, Live Collision is regarded as the leading curatorial model of Live Art in Ireland, both as an annual festival and year-round independent creative producing organisation; working with artists of exceptional calibre across and between art form.

Live Collision presents work never before shown in Ireland, with multiple partners, to realise work of varying scale across sites, locations and contexts beyond the conventional model.  The work of the festival sets a series of provocations, asking us the viewer to come into direct relationship with the complexity of our contemporary state; excavating with urgency topics such as class, race, capitalism, political rhetoric, migration, feminism, identity, gender, sexuality, access, equality and displacement. 

Live Collision provides a platform for work that otherwise does not have a home within existing infrastructures; generating a space for discussion and disruption of cultural norms beyond the conventional performance space. Most notably, unprecedented initiatives such as the TRANS LIVE ART SALON (established in 2016 as a festival residency for artists from across all media, arts workers and other interested parties of all generations from non-binary gender minorities e.g. transgender, gender fluid, non-binary, genderqueer, agender, non-cis intersex) and NU ROOTS a curated event presenting the best of African artists in Ireland, and a series of salons, residencies and mentorships supporting emerging practitioners who have lived experience of migration and/or displacement of identity or place. 

Sounds from a Safe Harbour

Sounds from a Safe Harbour (SFSH) was established in 2015 and is curated by Mary Hickson, together with Aaron & Bryce Dessner, Cillian Murphy and Enda Walsh.

SFSH is a biennial festival which provides a unique platform for music-based practice integrating it with visual art, theatre, dance and film.  Since its inception, residency practice has been at the heart of this festival – providing space and time for artists to develop their practice, learn from and collaborate with each other. The award winning SFSH has developed an international reputation for providing this specific and nourishing service to artists. The spirit of Irish creativity and fun has been at the heart of these residencies.  SFSH is proud to present and develop work with artists like Dorothy Cross, Bon Iver, RTE Concert Orchestra, The National, Feist, Ragnar Kjartansson and many more.

SFSH has demonstrated great ability to ignite ideas, develop ideas, present work in development, grow projects, find international partners for work and present the end results.  They are interested in testing new ideas and bringing people together, building an international reputation for collaborative based practice with Irish artists at the core, and using this platform to elevate Irish practice and bring it to a world stage.

Centre Culturel Irlandais (Paris)

The Centre Culturel Irlandais is Ireland’s flagship cultural centre in Europe. 

Located in the historic building of the Irish College, in the heart of the Latin quarter, the Centre Culturel Irlandais is Ireland’s flagship cultural centre in Europe. The Centre presents the work of contemporary Irish artists, reinforces the rich heritage of Franco-Irish relations and fosters a vibrant and creative resident community. In addition to its diverse cultural programme, the CCI houses France’s primary multi-media library of resources on Ireland as well as significant historic archives and an Old Library.

The Irish Society of Stage and Screen Designers

The Irish Society of Stage and Screen Designers was established in 2017 as a voluntary professional organisation run by designers, for designers. They strive to promote and support the work of designers in Ireland, both locally and internationally.

As the principal representative body of scenographers in Ireland, ISSSD facilitates communication between professionals nationally and internationally, also acting as a professional resource hub. Besides, ISSSD strives to raise the standard of Irish scenography, and to foster growth of scenographic education in Ireland. The success of the Prague Quadrennial 2019, the largest international festival in scenography and performance design, in which ISSSD represented the nation globally, was a milestone for Irish scenography that needs to be nourished and developed, particularly towards PQ2023. Crucial to the firm foundation of the society were the auspices of the Irish Theatre Institute, through which ISSSD has had access to a breadth of knowledge and experience. ITI is a sectoral partner of ISSSD.

NUI Galway – Drama and Theatre Studies

The Discipline of Drama and Theatre Studies was established at NUI Galway in 2014. As of September 2021, Drama at NUI Galway has 150 undergraduates, 25 MA students and 13 PhD students.

The university has a long history of excellence in the performing arts – a history that pre-dates the establishment of Drama as a degree subject. Notable graduates include the co-founders of Druid Theatre, Garry Hynes and Marie Mullen, both of whom went on to become Tony Award winners for direction and acting respectively. The university now enjoys a close partnership with Druid Theatre, with whom it runs a Druid Academy programme for training emerging theatre-makers. The university also has formal partnerships with many other theatre companies and arts organisations, including the Abbey Theatre (Ireland’s national theatre), the Gate Theatre, the Galway International Arts Festival and others, and really look forward to developing a partnership with field:arts in the area of producing, new work and arts management.

NUIG has particular research and teaching strengths in Irish theatre, playwriting, acting, practice-based research, musical theatre, children’s theatre, producing and many other areas. Every year, it stages at least two productions, as well as a series of lectures, public interviews with theatre practitioners, international conferences, and other events.