€350,000 invested in Clare arts

CLARE arts organisations are to benefit to the tune of more than €350,000 in grants from the Arts Council.
The Arts Council, the Irish government agency for funding and developing the arts, said it would invest in four Clare-based organisations with a proven track record of delivering great arts experiences for people all over the county and beyond. The agency have offered funding for the 15-month period to end March 2012 to Clare County Council arts office (€102,500); Glór (€112,500); Salmon Poetry (€50,000) and Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy (€100,000).
Glór will be celebrating its 10th anniversary and the funding will be used to continue their promotion of traditional arts, theatre, children’s shows, music, dance and visual arts. Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy is in its 39th year of delivering high-quality traditional music classes, concerts and sessions to attendees from home and abroad, while 2011 marks the 30th anniversary of Salmon Poetry and the publisher will run a series of events, along with its publishing programme, to celebrate this. The Arts Council is also supporting Clare County Council’s arts programme.
The chairman of the Arts Council, Pat Moylan said, “Despite the financial challenges we face as a country, the council sought to ensure that organisations remained viable and maintained jobs in order to deliver the best of the arts for people across the country. Now, more than ever, we need the arts to help restore our self-esteem, bind our communities together and send a clear signal to the world that Ireland is a hub of creative and innovative talent.”