communiqué (1) Refreshing Blue Drum Board
Agency in July. A draft plan was considered and a number of action points agreed leading to a sign-off meeting.
We are refreshing our Board and are interested in hearing from individuals with a community development and community arts background. Interested? Get in touch with Ed Carroll – blue.drum@yahoo.com
(ii) Follow-up meetings also took place with Clodagh McDonnell, Principal Officer in the Department of the Environment about linkages to the Community Culture Strategy and local authorities. We also met with Arts Council Head of Strategy, Martin Drury to speak about linkages. At both meetings we found an enthusiastic response that was focused on practical ideas for the future.
(2) Happy Parent (HP) Eleanor and the team were really busy during the summer and autumn. All workshops are a coproduction with the local FRC and took place in Kerry, Tipperary, Galway and Dublin. Also two non FRC groups have asked us to deliver the programme locally. Read Interesting for your FRC? Contact Gillian 01-8111446.
(iii) Cork City Community Arts Ten months after the EU project work in Cork, Niall Crowley and Ed made a return visit to reconnect with those we met before and ask permission for including the idea of a community culture platform in Cork. People were very enthusiastic and have agreed to meet again before Christmas. Recently, Ed has also contacted Eve Phillips from Ballincollig FRC to look at the possibility of their participation too. We’ll keep you updated. (iv) Limerick Creative Communities In Limerick, we also met with a lively network of community organisations. The Creative Communities group confirmed the need to increase the visibility of work on the ground. Both Northside and Southill FRCs actively participate in this group. More update about these meetings can be found on our website.
Spafield FRC, Cashel, Co Tipperary
(3) Meetings / Seminars Most of our work in this time is focused on the Community Culture initiative. Community Culture is part of our campaign to get more equality of resourcing for community arts work with children, adults and families.
(v) Galway Community Arts We have made contact with Jen who is one of the organisers of the GALCA group in Galway. They developed the Galway Cultural Hub which we can
(i) Community Culture Steering Group The first meeting of the Steering Group took place in the Family Support
1
communiqué learn a lot from about how to communicate what is happening locally and create a space for exchanges between people on the ground.
Presidency. Supported by Culture Ireland the project engaged with ‘small’ and distinctive culture’ of a district called Lower Šančiai. Read (7) Fundraising Successful applications include: Dublin City Council (€400) and Culture Ireland €4000. Unsuccessful ones include: Community Foundation’s Community Enterprise Fund, the EU Grundtvig Learning Partnership, and the Equality Authority Mainstreaming Project. Just 3 people were awarded EU Grundtvig inservice training which was a big disappointment. Due to shortfalls in funding we put back Untapped Capital, about cultural enterprise until 2014.
City (Re)Searchers,Kiosk (4) Facebook In July, Bluedrummers reached its first thousand friends on Facebook. We actively try to keep links to other FRCs who use that platform. Our facebook page also has specific pages e.g. Happy Parent and City Researchers. (5) Northsiders Museum Eleanor, Lisa and Neil continue with workshops in the Northside Shopping Centre, Coolock. Neil is putting together an exhibition for early 2014 about the rent strikes and the campaign against the ‘b scale’ rent assessment. We are interested in hearing from people in Cork city who have memories or press cuttings from that time. Ask Eleanor 01-8771446
Sneem FRC puppetry workshop July 2013
(7) Communications & Finances During the summer months we gave advice and support to 10 groups per month. We sent out 3 editions of eNotes to a data base of c.800 so far this year. We sent out our FRC art Survey to all FRC’s in the summer months and are in the process of doing a ring around to the FRC’s to get their feedback. We also continue to refresh our website. Tell us what you think!
(6) EU Presidency 2013 Project Ireland has a large Lithuanian population. Our EU research project took us to inquiryso it was timely for a trip to Kaunas to mark Ireland’s EU
Issue 3 / September 2013
2