“Purposeful partnerships” between Ireland’s commercial sector and creative community were celebrated in the National Concert Hall on Monday night, as the annual Business to Arts Awards ceremony distributed more than a dozen prizes and thousands of euro in bursaries.
The 31 shortlisted ventures, ranging from KPMG and Philip Lee LLP on the corporate side to the National Gallery and Cork Opera House on the artistic, awaited the announcement of the 13 award categories amid live performances of song, dance, spoken word and trad music.
PhotoIreland and Kennedy Wilson were awarded the CBRE Major Arts Partnership Award for establishing the International Centre for the Image in Dublin 1 last July.
The centre brings “the organisation’s research, production, exhibition and archive activities together in one dedicated home,” Business to Arts said, and “creates new opportunities for artistic and public engagement while embedding arts and culture within a big urban environment.”
The Gate Theatre and basis.point charity won the Small Arts Partnership Award for their livestream of the stage adaptation of Katriona O’Sullivan’s memoir, Poor, to 22,000 students in 337 secondary schools across 29 countries.
“The initiative widened access to professional theatre and introduced many young people to live performance for the first time,” Business to Arts said.
The Irish Times sponsored two of the awards’ categories: the Long-Term Partnership Award and a €5,000 bursary.
ESB and the National Concert Hall partnered together to deliver Quavers to Quadratics, a “programme using music to inspire learning” in Stem subjects. The initiative received the Long-Term Partnership Award for having reached more than 10,000 students across the State since 2020, “with a particular focus on Deis schools, underserved communities and Gaeltacht regions.”
Music Network was awarded The Irish Times €5,000 Arts Awards to help fund its delivery of “programmes bringing migrant and local families together through music, creativity and cultural exchange in Clare and Kildare”. It organises weekly workshops that explore lullabies in English, Irish and 16 other languages, among other activities.
Other notable winners included the Irish Architecture Foundation, 12th Field and Offaly and Meath county councils, which received the ESB Creative Sustainability Award for their Bog Bothy peatlands architecture project.
Specsavers Limerick and the University Concert Hall won the Creative Access Award for their “Panto for All” performances that aimed to “make live theatre more accessible to vulnerable and marginalised children and families across the midwest.”
Aoibheann McCaul received the Jim McNaughton/TileStyle €10,000 bursary to develop a one-woman theatre piece about infertility, IVF and miscarriage, while Peter Power and leon Butler were awarded the Accenture €10,000 bursary to develop a live and digital performance piece on grief, memory and digital afterlives.
Louise O’Reilly, chief executive of Business to Arts, said “the strongest partnerships between business and the arts do more than support great work. They change who gets to participate, what gets made and what becomes possible.”