Waterford City & County Council welcomes “Building Creative Communities” initiative
Enabling creativity in every community is a core pillar of the Creative Ireland Programme, an ambitious five-year initiative, from 2017 to 2022, which will place our strongest assets – our culture and creative communities – at the centre of public policy.
In 2016, Waterford City and County Council demonstrated their unique capacity to activate and support community engagement and participation in marking the Centenary year through a wide range of arts, culture and heritage initiatives.
Creative Ireland aims to build on this success by developing a dedicated Culture and Creativity Plan for Waterford. 2017 will see a special focus on children and young people and aim to significantly increase access for children to high quality arts and culture experiences.
A network of highly experienced librarians, arts officers and heritage officers has been set up across all 31 local authorities with a series of public meetings being held over the next four weeks to share, develop and explore ideas for increased investment in local arts, culture and creative industries.
Additional funding to support the initiative will be made available through the Creative Ireland Programme in 2017 with the potential for further investment over the next four years. Jane Cantwell has been appointed Creative Ireland Coordinator for Waterford City and County Council. In addition, all the agencies of Government will be activated to embed creativity across all aspects of their work and use that creative potential to promote collective wellbeing and social cohesion.
Waterford City and County Council and the Creative Ireland National Team will host an open meeting on the 5th of April 2017 at 6:30pm in the Large Room, City Hall to share details about the programme and to explore opportunities. Full details of the Creative Ireland Programme are available at creative.ireland.ie
