Leading NI artists honoured with National Lottery Major Awards by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland

Watch the video featuring the artists below.

For Strabane-based crime fiction writer, Brian McGilloway, the MIA award will enable the novelist to write fulltime, for the first time, towards the creation of a new book. Watch Brian's MIA video in full here: Brian's MIA video

Visual artist, Gail Ritchie, from Belfast, will use the MIA funding to develop new work, during a residency in France, for exhibiting across Europe including France, Belgium, Italy and Poland. Watch Gail's MIA video in full here: Gail's MIA video

Poet, Shelley Tracey, from Lisburn, will use the MIA funding towards a project entitled Exploring the Art of Creativity through Poetry Film. Shelley will work with Poetry Film Live Poetry Collective and her mentor, poetry film maker, Helen Dewbery, to explore poetry film as a medium for giving voice to carers to ensure that they are heard and their contribution and creativity are recognised. The poet will also design and facilitate writing workshops as part of her MIA project. Watch Shelley's MIA video in full here: Shelley's MIA video

Magician, Nikola Arkane, from Belfast, will use the MIA funding to create a stage magic act for touring in Northern Ireland and internationally. Her award will enable the artist to spend a year in South Korea developing her practice with leading magician Hyunjoon Kim. Watch Nikola's MIA video in full here: Nikola's MIA video

Gilly Campbell, Director of Arts Development, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, said, “The Arts Council of Northern Ireland is proud to announce four National Lottery funded Major Individual Artist awards this year. Congratulations to visual artist, Gail Ritchie, crime fiction writer, Brian McGilloway, poet, Shelley Tracey, and magician, Nicola McBride, aka Nikola Arkane. They are four immensely talented artists who have already made a significant contribution to the arts in Northern Ireland and beyond. Through this Major Individual Artist Award, each artist will benefit greatly from being able to take time out to concentrate purely on creating ambitious, high-quality projects with the financial backing they need to produce work of lasting value.

Thanks to money raised for good causes by The National Lottery players, these major awards will help to cement their national and international reputations as artists, and strengthen the positive cultural profile of Northern Ireland, both at home and abroad. The four join a distinguished list of artists who have previously benefited from these major awards and we wish them every success as they create exciting new work.”

Artists who have previously benefited from the Major Individual Artist awards, including writers; Richard O’Rawe, Derek Kielty, Susan McKay, Moyra Donaldson, Carol Moore, Rosemary Jenkinson, Malachi O’Doherty, Jimmy McAleavey, Alice McCullough, Anne Devlin, Carlo Gébler, Damian Gorman, Patricia Craig, Sinéad Morrissey, Glenn Patterson, Owen McCafferty, Jan Carson, Stephanie Conn, Gail McConnell and Shannon Sickles (Yee); performance artist, Sinéad O’Donnell; visual artists, Ian Cumberland, Mairéad McClean, Jennifer Trouton, Rita Duffy, Susan MacWilliam, Sharon Kelly and Cara Murphy; composers, Deirdre Gribben, Greg Caffrey, Ed Bennett, Piers Hellawell, Ian Wilson, Elaine Agnew, Conor Mitchell, Neil Martin and Deirdre McKay; musicians, Darragh Morgan, Ruth McGinley, Michael McHale, Giselle Allen and David Lyttle plus choreographers, Oona Doherty and Eileen McClory, among others.

Major Individual Artist awards form part of the wider Support for the Individual Artist Programme (SIAP) which is supported with funding from The National Lottery and administered by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland annually. Visit https://artscouncil-ni.org/funding for information on all funding opportunities.

Artist Biographies

Brian McGilloway

Brian McGilloway is the author of thirteen crime novels to date. His first, Borderlands, published by Macmillan New Writing, was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger and was hailed by The Times as ‘one of (2007’s) most impressive debuts.’ Subsequent novels have been shortlisted for Irish Book Awards, CWA Daggers and the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year in which competition his 2020 novel, The Last Crossing, won an unprecedented Highly Commended Award. His New York Times and UK No.1 bestseller, Little Girl Lost received the McCrea Literary Award from Ulster University while his standalone novel The Empty Room became an instant Sunday Times Bestseller on publication in 2022. His work has been translated into over a dozen languages. In 2023, Brian was invited by the Linen Hall Library in Belfast to establish an archive of his writing there, which launched in September that year. He lives in Strabane with his wife and four children. His most recent novel, The One You Least Suspect, was published in May.

Gail Ritchie

Gail Ritchie is a professional visual artist and researcher based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She was born in Newtownards, County Down in 1966 and studied art and design at Ulster University (BA Hons. 1991) and at Queen’s University (MA Arts Management 2013). In 2022 Gail was awarded a PhD in International Relations from Queen’s University Belfast for practice-based research into how the Northern Ireland Troubles might be commemorated in material form. She has been a studio holder of Queen Street Studios (QSS) since 2003 and has served both as a Board Member and Chair. During this time she led fundraising efforts which enabled the group to relocate twice to improved premises.

From 1995 to 2003 Gail lived in the Republic of Ireland where she was a member of Backwater Artists Group Cork. Rewards received to date include Arts Council Ireland, Arts Council Northern Ireland, Cultural Relations Committee, the British Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I received the Basil Chubb Award from the Political Studies Association of Ireland for her practice-based thesis The im/material monument. Most recently, Gail was one of four international artists selected for the Art Of Remembrance project which takes place in European museums in 2026.

Gail has undertaken residencies at the Irish Cultural Centre Paris, Rooftop Studios Berlin Ulster Museum Collections Department and British School of Archaeology Ankara and has spoken about her work at symposia and conferences in London, Edinburgh and Belfast. Gail’s work is in private and public collections throughout Ireland including National Museums Northern Ireland, Arts Council Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Government Collection and the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery Cork.

Gail continues to work from her studio in East Belfast (QSS Gallery and Studios) focusing on mixed-media installations which includes speculative research into time, memory and memorials. Currently Gail is researching the themes of time, technology, conflict and memory as part of the Art of Remembrance project at La Coupole Centre for History and Remembrance in Northern France.

Shelley Tracey

Dr Shelley Tracey is a published poet, arts coordinator and evaluator, creative writing facilitator, writing mentor, poetry filmmaker and photographer, and author of articles on creativity. Previous roles include Writer in Residence in a Belfast primary school and Literature and Verbal Arts Coordinator for Community Arts Partnership.

Shelley’s first poetry collection, Elements of Distance, was published in 2017 by Lapwing; many other poems have been published in journals, including The North, Honest Ulsterman, The Haibun Journal, Abridged and Orbis. Creative collaborations have included Reflections, a booklet of Shelley’s poems responding to paintings by Ingrid Frank, and poetry to accompany the paintings in Tales from an Old Fort Town: A Personal Response to the Jewish History of Crete by George Sfougaras, Etz Hayyim, Chania, Crete (2018). Shelley has taken part in many poetry readings as a member of the international poetry collectives Poets Abroad and International Stage and Page.

Shelley’s commissions include reminiscence poems and booklets for c21 Theatre Company and poetic reflections for the Narrative Inquiry Conference, Dublin City University, 2021.

Shelley has received several previous awards from the Arts Council NI. In 2015 she was Artist in the Community in 2015, with an intercultural creative writing project, ‘A Write to a Sense of Belonging’.

As a Poetry Therapy Practitioner and committee member of the Irish Poetry Therapy Network, Shelley created the NI Poetry Therapy Interest Group, which offers regular workshops to creative practitioners at The MAC.

Shelley is passionate about the power of the arts to enhance wellbeing, and the rights of diverse groups and individuals to access opportunities for creativity. Shelley has designed and facilitated creative writing classes online and in a range of in-person settings, including schools, higher education, community and mental health settings, arts and writers’ centres, and groups for writers with sight loss. Since 2020, Shelley has been engaging unpaid family carers in the Northern Trust area in writing projects. Shelley also facilitates writing classes for autistic adults and is currently developing a publication with this group.

Nicola McBride/Nikola Arkane

Whilst studying a degree in Drama at Queen’s University Nikola undertook work experience with Cahoots N.I., a multi award-winning children’s theatre company in Belfast who specialize in magic. Soon after that, she joined The Ulster Society of magicians. After winning a stage competition in 2006 Nikola Arkane was elected their first ever female chair from 2012 to 2013. In 2016 she was asked to organise her first Irish magic convention, ‘Belfast MagiCon’, bringing magicians from all over the world including Roberto Giobbi from Switzerland, Canada’s Shane Cobalt, Malin Nilsson from Sweden, America’s John Lenahan and Rafael from Belgium.

From 2016 – 2018 Nikola helped devise and create “Danny Carmo’s Mathematical Mysteries” a multimedia illusion and magic show with Cahoots N.I. and thanks to an American theatre agent buying the show, she toured that show in theatres all over America – twice, including Florida, Poughkeepsie, Detroit, Vermont, Montana, Colorado, Texas, San Francisco, California and even the magic capital of the world, Las Vegas!

To develop her close-up magic career, Nikola spent time in Sweden at Tom Stone’s Magic University Conjuring Course developing her skills in magical performance, misdirection and prop making. In January 2019 Nikola was booked to perform her first close-up and stage act for adults professionally at The Magic Club in Oslo. Following that she performed at The Chicago Magic Lounge in July and in August with Mystique in Stockholm.

Nikola Arkane also competed and won the International Brotherhood of Magicians British Ring Close Up Competition and took first place in the Ali Bongo Micro Marathon. After winning these awards, the artist was booked to perform thirty-five shows at the The Magic Castle in Hollywood in the Close-Up Gallery and in the Parlour of Prestidigitation (as FizzWizzPop), representing the U.K. and Ireland.

Between 2020 - 2024 Nikola entered into and became a Semi-Finalist on television show, Sweden’s got talent. She was featured on the front cover of the oldest and most known magic magazine in the world - Genii Magazine.

During this time, Nikola was also promoted to membership of the Inner Magic Circle with Silver Star recognising her contributions to performance of magic by The Magic Circle in London. She was given an International Rising Star Award from the Allan Slaight Foundation in Canada. Became a Swedish Grand Prix Stage champion and was featured on Season 10 of hit American television show, Penn & Teller’s: Fool Us.