Armagh woman Kathryn Graham is one of 242 artists to have been awarded funding this week through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Support for Individual Artists Programme (SIAP).
The funding package worth almost £475,000 has been made possible thanks to the National Lottery and will provide vital support to artists working across all disciplines including visual arts, literature, music and community arts.
Artists awarded grants through the SIAP programme will receive General Arts Awards worth between £1,000-£2,500 each. This funding will be used to help purchase new equipment and to develop of new projects, as well as travel grants and residencies.
Kathryn is a successful visual artist who has exhibited locally at the Royal Ulster Academy, as well as in London, Sweden and Hong Kong.
In 2019 she was awarded an Arts Council residency in India and spent four weeks in January at Ramgarh Shekhawati. This latest grant of £1800 will allow Kathryn to create a new body of mixed media work influenced by her childhood in Northern Ireland and time spent in India.
Today’s funding announcement will be welcome news to artists who have faced unprecedented hardship as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and is in addition to awards of £3.8m announced earlier this week under the Emergency Resilience Programme for individuals working across the creative sector.
Roisin McDonough, Chief Executive of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, commented: “The Support for Individual Artists Programme Is designed to help artists develop their practice and embark on new creative projects. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on an already fragile arts sector here but we hope interventions like this will help to bolster the sector, enabling individual artists to develop new ideas, to adapt their practice and find new and engaging ways to present their art.
“Thanks to National Lottery players 30 million pounds is raised for good causes every week. That means that today we are able to give 242 artists that vital lifeline they need to keep working, to stay creative and continue on with their careers.”
