Applications are now live for Kildare Arts Service's First Fortnight Award

Kildare County Council has said that it is now taking applications from individual artists and/or collectives to the Kildare Arts Service First Fortnight Award.

First Fortnight is Ireland’s Mental Health Arts & Culture Festival.

It missions outlines that it challenges mental health prejudice and stigma through arts and cultural action and programmes events that create spaces for unscripted conversations around mental health.

Projects that address challenges and provoke conversation around mental health will be considered for presentation at an event in the Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge on January 14 2022.

In association with the county council, the Kildare Arts Service First Fortnight Award aims to support the development and presentation of new work in any artform that challenges the stigma attached to mental health.

The theme for this year's festival is "Open."

Applications to this award are welcome from Kildare-based individual artists and/or collectives with existing or ‘in development’ projects, and funding through the Kildare Arts Service First Fortnight Award is available up to €3,000. 

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Speaking in a submission call-out, organisers of the festival said in a statement: "During a time when it can be easy to feel disconnected, when venues have closed their doors, when families and communities had to stay apart, we want to focus on the many creative ways we can remain open:

• Open to hope, to trust, to embrace a new reality filled with infinite possibilities, new ideas and change.
• To open up to other people, to start conversations
• To risk being seen …exactly as you are
• To dare to be open and honest with who and how we are
• To gently open up to explore our dreams
• To be open to the challenges that may frustrate but also motivate us to find new ways
• Open to find ways to embrace or return to the arts and cultural events
• Open to picking up a paintbrush, a pen, a microphone/hairbrush and diving into the wonder and experience of becoming a creator

We want this to be a festival open to everyone."

The statement concluded: "We are open to new fledgling ideas ready to take flight but are also supportive of remounting pieces of work/events that have already flown with great success."

The deadline for applications for the First Fortnight Festival is Friday November 12 at 12pm.
 
First Fortnight Festival 2022 will run from January 2 to January 16.

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