Festival Parade looking for Entrants

Funding of up to 8,000 available, Parade to take place on Easter Sunday Night, April 12^th

The Samhlaiocht Easter Arts Festival, which is this year celebrating 17 years of bringing the Arts to the street of Tralee, has issued a call for entries for its upcoming Easter Arts Festival Parade.

The Samhlaiocht Easter Arts parade is always a wonderfully lively and colourful event featuring over twenty groups from all over the county as well as samba bands, other professional street artists and on one memorable occasion a host of bikini clad Brazilians!

"The parade is always one of our most vibrant events," said Jason O' Mahony, Director of Samhlaiocht. "The streets of Tralee come alive, full of colourful characters, colourful costumes and with a real festival atmosphere. You need only watch the parade to realise the spirit of the Arts is very much alive in Kerry."

This year the theme of the Samhlaiocht Easter Arts Festival is 'Imagination' and the Festival will feature all aspects of the Arts from music, tradition, craft, culture, food and film to literature.

The Parade will take place on Sunday, April 12^th at approximately 7.30pm and groups that are interested are encouraged to get in touch with Samhlaiocht and fill out an application form.

"We've had a fantastically high calibre of community groups taking part in previous years," added Jason, "and the interest has been huge even at this early stage, so I'd really encourage interested groups to get in touch as quickly as possible. We’ll finish the parade this year with a spectacular fire-work display and I bet that all the communities that take part will set off fire-works in their own right!"

There two types of funding available. The first is called the Kerry Group Five Community Project. Five groups will be selected from among the applicants. Each group will receive funding of 1000 euro to provide artists fees, prop building, costumes and transport.

Funding is also available for Participant Groups. All kinds of groups from play schools to active retired groups are welcome to apply. The groups will each receive funding to assist towards expenses incurred.

"We hope that this can be the biggest year ever," added Jason. "We're delighted that Kerry Group who have supported Samhlaiocht since its inception are on board. Quite literally without their ongoing support the festival would cease to exist."

Application forms for both streams of funding are available online at http://www.samhlaiocht.com/ Forms are also available for the Samhlaiocht offices in the Old Presbytery on Lower Castle Street in the Heart of Tralee. For More Information please contact Trish Thompson of Samhlaiocht on 066 712 9934, by email on trish@samhlaiocht.com , or by simply calling into the office.

Samhlaiocht is supported through grant aid from The Arts Council, Kerry County Council, Failte Ireland and Culture Ireland and by the generous corporate sponsorship of Kerry Group.

Children's Art Competition Winners Announced

The Samhlaiocht Easter Arts Festival and Children's Bumble Bee Festival are the highlight of the Easter weekend in Kerry. Since 1992 the Festivals have drawn lovers of the Arts from all over Kerry to Tralee where they participate in a wide variety of wonderful events that take place over the Easter weekend.

Samhlaiocht, which means 'imagination' as Gaeilge, has captured people's imagination and the Festivals offer something for young and old alike. The Festivals have a different theme every year and routinely see in excess of seventy artistic events taking place in Tralee.

The theme for the 2009 Festival is 'Imagination' and in an exciting new departure Samhlaiocht offered children from all over the county the opportunity to see their work immortalized in the pages of this year's Festivals' Programme Guide. And the winners of the competition have just been announced.

"We were absolutely inundated with entries," said Bridie Brassil, who coordinated the event for Samhlaioct. "We had entries from all over Kerry from Fenit to Kilcummin, Killarney to Castleisland. Students from close to 15 schools submitted entries as well as numerous individuals. We had well over 150 entries all told!"

"One of the hardest tasks was deciding who the eventual winner should be," said Michele Sheehan, Samhlaiocht. "We spent a few days with all the art, all over the walls and all over every single desk top space in the office. We had everyone in the office driven mad!"

"Originally we were planning on having just one winner but there were so many fantastic entries that we couldn't do that!" added Bridie with a laugh. "Eventually we picked one overall winner and six special merit winners. We framed all the winning entries and have shown them to the kids involved – they're absolutely delighted!"

The overall winner of the competition is Anna Sugrue from Blennerville National School who is 10 years old with her winning work titled, 'Smile'. The other winners are Clodagh Gaynor, 8, from Fenit, Bronte Hannafin, 9, from Blennerville, Jack heaslip, 10, from CBS Tralee, Mary Murphy, 8, from Kilcummin, Micheal Murphy, 11, from Blennerville and Erin Stack, 8, from Kilmoyle.

Anna's piece will grace the cover of the Easter Arts Festival Programme Guide which will be ready and full to the brim of wonderful artistic activities for people of all ages. "Every year our Programme Guide is snapped up by attendees at the festival," said Bridie, "so we've decided that the programme guide is now a vibrant and artistic part of the festival. Extracts from the winning pics will appear though-out the Programme Guide!"

A selection of the entries, including the over all winning entry and all the merit winners, will go on display in the Samhlaiocht Gallery. The exhibition will open on Thursday, April 9^th and will be on display through out Easter. The official prize giving will take place at the exhibition opening in the Samhlaiocht Gallery in the Old Presbytery on Lower Castle Street, in the heart of Tralee, on the 9^th of April. Prizes are generously sponsored by Smyth's Toyshop, Polymath Book Shop and O' Mahony's Book Shop and will be presented at the exhibition opening.

For more information on Samhlaiocht please log on to www.samhlaiocht.com

Samhlaiocht is supported through grant aid from The Arts Council, Kerry County Council, Failte Ireland and by the generous corporate sponsorship of Kerry Group.

Rock For Experience 2009

Ross Brassil at the 2008 Rock for Experience

It's that time of year again, Samhlaiocht is planning events for its annual Easter Arts Festival, and with that in mind, dates have now being set for the annual Rock for Experience, an event that highlights the wealth of young talent in Tralee's music scene. The 2009 Rock for Experience will take place on Easter Monday, April 13th.

"The theme for this year's festival is 'Imagination'," said Michele Sheehan, organizer of Rock for Experience. "We're anticipating a fantastic buzz and an atmosphere that's even more electric than the past few years. And they were brilliant!"

Rock for Experience provides an opportunity for budding musicians to perform in front of an audience using a professional PA system which is provided free of charge by Samhlaiocht. The organizers will also supply a drum kit, but bands will need to bring their own instruments and snare drum. It's a non-alcoholic event for all ages and will take place in Benner's Hotel in The Syndicate Rooms in Tralee.

Mike Foley, a co-ordinator of the event, added, "We're filming and recording this year's Rock For Experience live, and we'll make it available to download from the web. We're very excited about this and it's wonderful to be able to take Rock for Experience to the next level. The feedback we're received from the bands, even at this early stage, is extremely positive."

"This is the second year that we're using the Syndicate Rooms," said Michele. "It's an amazing venue, the audience can see the bands playing live on eight screens which are located through out the venue. It's a huge plus for young bands and a fantastic experience for younger musicians to play in a venue like this. We had a fantastic turnout last year with 10 bands and more than 500 screaming fans in the audience. Roper headlined the gig last year and we'll bring in another big name act to play with the younger bands this year."

Samhlaiocht is currently searching for the young bands to star in this extravaganza. "We've built up a huge following over the years and our regulars are a great asset but we'd also encourage younger, up and coming bands to apply. You never know when we'll unearth the next Metallica or Led Zepplin," said Mike with a laugh.

Application forms are available to download from the web on www.samhlaiocht.com Interested parties can also get in touch with Michele or Mike in the Samhlaiocht office in The Old Presbytery, on Lower Castle Street in the heart of Tralee. Please call 066 712 9934 for more information or email Mike on mike@samhlaiocht.com

For more information on Samhlaiocht please log on to www.samhlaiocht.com

Arts Council December Newsletter

December was a very busy month for the Arts Council. The Council announced more than 400 funding decisions for next year, an investment totalling almost e60 million. These are the Council's major grants; the remaining, smaller grants will be announced throughout 2009.

With significantly less resources than in previous years, the Council has been mindful of its role as both a leader and a partner in arts provision, adopting a strategic approach. In its decisions it took as its priority maintaining the fabric of the arts -- the key infrastructure - across more than a dozen artforms. In all of this, the Council was guided by its long-term policy, Partnership for the Arts, and aims to steer the development of each sector through the current downturn.

Also in the newsletter, we publish the closing dates for grants and awards in 2009. It is important to note that there are a number of changes in the ways to which Arts Council Awards will be offered in 2009. Not all awards will be open to applicants in all artforms or arts practices, and for some awards only one deadline has been scheduled for 2009.

Following on from the New Media, New Audience? seminar in November, we are pleased to inform you that presentations and audio recordings from the seminar are now available online. We are delighted to share this thought-provoking and timely discussion with all our subscribers.

Elsewhere in the newsletter, we announce the decisions for the second round of bursaries in 2008, and inform you about the upcoming deadline for the Kevin Kieran Award.

Rounding off the newsletter are our regular articles on news from the arts community and international opportunities from the Cultural Contact Point.