Career development awards for sixteen artists with disabilities from Northern Ireland

Monday 30th March 2020 at 11am 0 Comments Arts & Disability

Image: Recipients of the iDA awards 2020

The iDA funding programme is a dedicated annual arts development programme, delivered through the University of Atypical, to enable deaf and disabled artists who are working in a range of art forms to develop their professional artistic careers.
The bursaries provide valuable opportunities for each artist to produce a new high-quality creative work, receive training or professional mentoring.

Damien Coyle, Chairperson of the University of Atypical, said:

'The iDA awards scheme is invaluable in supporting disabled and deaf artists to produce exciting new work and has a successful track record in pump priming the careers of disabled and deaf artists. We could not have achieved this without the support of our partners, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’.

He added; 'iDA awards supports proposals by artists from a broad range of disabilities. This is a developmental scheme and we welcome applications from emerging artists as well as more established artists. The scheme is competitive and we had applications to the value of four times the funding available. Our funding decisions were made on the basis of artistic merit, quality, and benefits to the artist to help them in progressing their careers'.

Gilly Campbell, Head of Community Arts & Education, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, added:

‘Congratulations to all sixteen artists. These awards are given in recognition of the artists’ work to date and to provide them with the necessary support to take their careers to the next level. The Arts Council is proud to support this important funding programme which encourages the creation of new, high-quality artistic work and addresses the need for disabled artists to have ongoing training and skills development within the sector.’

Through the University of Atypical’s support, deaf and disabled artists have developed unique artwork of extremely high artistic quality, some progressing to a level where they have received international recognition. The iDA scheme’s purpose is to identify, encourage and nurture individual talent amongst disabled practitioners.

The recipients are (alphabetical by first name):

Visual Art
Adam Elder-Mullan
James Ashe
Pamela Walker
Paul Moore
Maurice Orr
Shauna McGowan
Shiro Masuyama

Language Arts
Anita Gracey
Peter Courtney 

Music
Catherine Hatt
Mary Louise McCord

Dance
Helen Hall

Combined Arts
Andrew Ward 
Marie Mullan
Niamh Scullion
Paula Clarke 
Shannon Sickles