The Ark and Imaginate Launch New Toolkit for Artists
The Ark and Imaginate are delighted to announce the publication of Building Your Case, a digital toolkit for anyone creating performances for young audiences.
At a launch event hosted by the Irish Consulate in Scotland at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh on Wednesday 16 August, The Ark and Imaginate were delighted to announce Building Your Case, a new digital toolkit to help artists and small companies who create performances for young audiences to navigate the world of funding in Ireland and Scotland.
This toolkit should give practitioners a grounding in key policies and an insight into some of the research that shows the benefits that performance and other artforms can bring to children. With this information, plus our other tips and resources, artists will be able to make a strong case for their work to be funded.
This project is a collaboration between Imaginate, the national organisation in Scotland, which promotes and develops performance for children and young people, and The Ark, a children’s cultural centre in Ireland. As well as team members in both organisations and a Research Assistant from Queen Mary University, Edinburgh, a number of artists in both countries consulted with us on the toolkit content and format.
This toolkit is available to view online and download here. If you would like an accessible, plain text version of the toolkit, please email Aideen McCole at development@ark.ie.
We welcome feedback! This toolkit will evolve over time, with more studies being added and more accessible formats being created. If you have suggestions or comments, just drop us a line at development@ark.ie.
The Ark would like to thank our core funders at the Arts Council, the Department of Education, Temple Bar Cultural Trust and Dublin City Council for their ongoing support of The Ark and artists making work for children and young people.
We would also like to thank the Arts Council and O'Kennedy Consulting for inviting The Ark to participate in the RAISE programme. It has been invaluable in helping The Ark to build our fundraising capacity and we are delighted to be able to apply and share some of our learnings with artists and small companies in the Building Your Case toolkit.