Leading NI artists receive highest honour from Arts Council NI

Supported by Arts Council of Northern Ireland National Lottery funding, these awards are the highest value honour bestowed on individual artists each year. The prestigious awards are given in recognition of the contribution each of the artists has made to creative and cultural life in Northern Ireland and makes it possible for them to undertake a substantial, ambitious project that will make a significant impact on the development of their artistic careers and profile.

Each of the artists will now use the award to develop a series of new works.

Poet Padraig Regan will use their award to begin work on a new poetry collection exploring geology. They are interested in how poetry and language can relate to the natural world, and how thinking about landscape on geological timescales may allow us to see the landscape as something that's very much in process rather than a kind of static backdrop to our human lives.

Watch the video with Padraig Regan below.

Author Bernie McGill will use her award to create a new work of fiction based on Eleonora Giulia Amalia Duse, an Italian actress active around the 1890s – 1920s and rated by many as the greatest of her time. As part of the award, Bernie will spend time researching Duse at the Cini Foundationi and Museo Civico di Asolo in Italy.

Watch the video with Bernie McGill below.

Inclusive theatre maker and director Andrew Stanford will use his MIA award to create 'Home in a Boat!', an immersive sensory theatre adventure that's all at sea. The project is being created for families across the country, serving the needs of children, young people, and adults who have complex needs and PMLD (Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities) and will be a sensory theatre storytelling experience that participants can engage with from the comfort of their own homes.

Watch the video with Andrew Stanford below.

Visual artist and painter Pádraig Mac Cana’s paintings are interchanges between external events, observations and his inner life of experiences and memories. Pádraig is currently undertaking an extended residency with The Florence Trust in London and will use the MIA award to research, develop and produce a new series of paintings that confront and reframe an aspect of 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.

Director of Arts Development at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Gilly Campbell, said, “Congratulations to all four artists in receiving a Major Individual Artist 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. Thanks to money raised for good causes by the National Lottery players, these major awards will help to cement the national and international reputations of these 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 the Major Individual Artist award, including writers; Susan McKay, Moyra Donaldson, Carol Moore, Rosemary Jenkinson, Malachi O’Doherty, Jimmy McAleavey, Anne Devlin, Carlo Gébler, Damian Gorman, Patricia Craig, Sinéad Morrissey, Glenn Patterson, Owen McCafferty, Brian McGilloway and Shelley Tracey; playwright Shannon Sickles (Yee), performance artist, Sinéad O’Donnell, magician, Nikola Arkane, visual artists, Mairéad McClean, Rita Duffy, Susan MacWilliam, Cara Murphy and Gail Ritchie; composers, Deirdre Gribben, Ed Bennett, Piers Hellawell, Ian Wilson, Elaine Agnew, Conor Mitchell, Neil Martin and Deirdre McKay; musicians, Michael McHale, Ruth McGinley and David Lyttle plus choreographer, Oona Doherty, 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 www.artscouncil-ni.org/funding for information on all funding opportunities.

Artist Biographies

Bernie McGill: Bernie McGill is a novelist and short story writer and the winner of the 2023 Edge Hill Short Story Prize for her collection This Train is For. She is the author of two novels: The Watch House (nominated for the Ireland European Union Prize for Literature in 2019) and The Butterfly Cabinet (2010). Her work has been widely anthologised and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. She is a Fellow with the Royal Literary Fund, a Mentor with the Irish Writers’ Centre and an Honorary Member of the Linen Hall Library in which building her writing archive is held. Her first short story collection, Sleepwalkers was re-published in 2025 by No Alibis Press.

Padraig Regan: Padraig Regan's second collection The Matter is published by Carcanet in 2026. Their debut Some Integrity (Carcanet, 2022) received the Clarissa Luard Award and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. They are the author of two poetry pamphlets: Delicious (Lifeboat, 2016) and Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real (Emma Press, 2017). In 2015, they were a recipient of an Eric Gregory Award, and in 2020 they were awarded the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary Prize. They hold a PhD on creative-critical and hybridised writing practices in medieval texts and the work of Anne Carson from the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen's University Belfast, where they were a Ciaran Carson Writing and the City Fellow in 2021. They were a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge from 2022 to 2024

Pádraig Mac Cana: Primarily known as a painter, Mac Cana also produces drawings, prints and sculpture. He was born in Cladai, County Armagh. He gained MA in Fine Art at the University of Ulster, Belfast, in 1989. He was a founding member of Flax Studios, 1990 and PS2, 1994, Belfast. Mac Cana lectured part-time at Ulster University and was guest lecturer at numerous colleges in Ireland and abroad before stepping back from teaching in 2022.

Mac Cana has collaborated with dancers and choreographer, Dylan Quinn on a number of projects, including creating the visuals and set design for a theatre dance production Tost in 2016. He has undertaken a number of residencies in Ireland and further afield including an international printmaking residency at Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee, Belgium, in 2023, returning to take part in their Art Print Fair, 2024. He was awarded an international residency at the Centre Cultural Irlandais, Paris in 2022. Mac Cana has exhibited regularly in group, curated and solo exhibitions, many with The Fenderesky Gallery in Belfast and across Ireland, since the early 1990s. A major exhibition of his paintings, Black Quarter was held at the MAC, Belfast, 2015. His studio is close to the Fews Forest in South Armagh and he is currently undertaking a residency with the Florence Trust, in London.

Andrew Stanford: Andrew Stanford is among the world's leading inclusive theatre makers and directors. A specialist in immersive and accessible theatre experiences, Andrew has innovated creative methodologies for engaging D/deaf, disabled, autistic and neurodivergent audiences that have influenced professional inclusive arts practice at an international scale.

Andrew spent a decade at Belfast's Replay Theatre Company, with notable work including; 'Tribe' and 'Hollow' - landmark productions designed for autistic and/or neurodivergent young audiences; 'Thaw' - a touring immersive sensory production for audiences who have profound and multiple learning disabilities; 'Prism' - a family show that introduced new physical accessibility strategies, including a sustainable touring model for captioning, and; 'Rotviska' - a major international co-production for children and young people who have complex disabilities that toured across Sweden and featured as Jury Selection at the 2026 Bibu International Festival.

In 2020, working in partnership with local artists Mary McGurk and Darren Robinson, Andrew delivered 'Coco', a sensory theatre production that toured directly to the homes of young complex needs audiences and shielding families during the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic. 'Coco' represented significant development in accessible theatre approaches, and operated as the only live, in-person theatre experience delivered across Northern Ireland during that time, achieving vital and profound social impact to isolated families among the most at-risk in our community.

Described as a "pioneer" by British Theatre Guide, Andrew has trained dozens of artists and arts professionals in his unique, proven methodology, working across Europe as a consultant, facilitator and director. In 2023, Andrew was commissioned to deliver the opening speech at an arena in Oslo, Norway, as part of a national conference for Norwegian arts managers, advocating for the value of inclusive arts practice, and he has delivered seminars and creative training to artists and established companies in Sweden, Norway, Latvia, Malta, Poland, UK and Ireland.

Andrew has passionately dedicated his artistic career to serving the creative, social and cultural needs of typically excluded communities across Northern Ireland. He feels privileged to have received this ACNI support and continues to be an unwavering advocate for the exceptional creative talent serving our society with determination and resilience.