Arts Council Funding | Music Bursary Award

Applications for the Arts Council Music Bursary Award opens on Tuesday, 24 May from midday.

The purpose of the award is to support professional artists to develop their art practice. It provides artists with the time and resources to think, research, reflect and critically engage with their art.

Further guidelines will be available on the Arts Council website.

The objective of the Arts Council Music Bursary Award is to support individual professional artists in the field of music in the substantive development of their artistic practice.The award emphasises the value and benefit to an artist’s development derived from an extended process of engagement with their artistic practice at any stage of their professional career. The award therefore provides artists with the time and resources to think, research, reflect and engage with their artistic practice by enabling them to do one or more of the following:

  • Spend focused time substantively developing their artistic practice;
  • Spend time researching/thinking about/developing a new idea for separate dissemination;
  • Spend focused time developing their technical skills in a particular area or developing/learning new skills related to their practice or area of interest;
  • Spend time working with a mentor or collaborator(s) to develop an idea or to assist in developing or up-skilling within a particular area of the applicant’s practice or an area related to the applicant’s practice;
  • Undertake a short period of training by way of master classes or other professional training opportunities (whether national or international);
  • Purchase a limited amount of equipment and materials to assist with the development of their practice (Note: this can be no more than 15% of the value of the overall request for support).

Potential proposals could be those that:

  • Enable a composer or performer working in any genre to buy time for substantive development of their artistic practice;
  • Facilitate the development or completion of a specific body of artistic work excluding dissemination;
  • Enable artists to invest time in focused study of particular repertoire or area of technique.

Closing date for applications is 17:30 Thursday, 23 June 2022.

Please note: You must be registered with the online services website to make an application for any Arts Council funding. If you are not already registered, we recommend you register for online services as far in advance of the deadline as possible, as it may take five days for your online services registration to be processed.

We also urge anyone, before starting your application, to reach out to the relevant contact within the Arts Council (awards@artscouncil.ie).

For further information, please see artscouncil.ie.