National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) has launched a new partnership programme with the Galway International Arts Festival (GIAF).
The university announced that a new one-year MA will be available in Creative Arts: Producing and Curation. Applications for the course are now open and the first classes will start in autumn 2019.
GIAF covers a range of arts forms including theatre, dance, music, opera, street performance, visual arts and comedy. In 2018 the festival was named as one of the top five summer festivals in Europe. GIAF and NUIG have been in a partnership since 2018, when they announced a multi-year effort to create cultural opportunities for students.
The university has played a key role for the festival, offering a venue hub where over 50,000 people come to the campus to attend NUIG events.
Charlotte McIvor, programme director at NUIG, said: “Students will emerge from this programme as reflective practitioners with diverse transferable practical skills across these two interrelated industries. In order to protect the arts and grow our creative industries, we need the best possible people in these roles, and this programme seeks to find and nurture them.”
Students in creative producing will be taught the practical steps needed to turn an artistic vision into a realised project for an audience, whether the work is in performing arts, literature, visual arts or an interdisciplinary area. Curation will teach the students the assembly and delivery of artistic experiences for audiences, in the form of art collections, digital objects on a website or a programme of performances.
John Crumlish, CEO of GIAF said, “We are so excited to be involved in this initiative which will play such an important role in delivering the next generation of cultural producers and curators.”
To coincide with the course announcement, GIAF has revealed its first theatre show of the 2019 programme. The acclaimed UK theatre company Kneehigh will showcase Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) written by Carl Grose and directed by Mike Shepherd.
The festival runs from 15-28 July 2019.
