As a contribution to the promotion of best practice in arts in education, the Arts Council has published a new directory called Supporting Arts in Education. The publication, which is free of charge and available from the Arts Council, lists contact details and activities of 104 Arts Council-funded organisations and venues and 33 local authorities which offer arts in education programmes to primary and secondary schools. The directory also summarises the education and outreach work of Ireland's ten national cultural institutions (who are funded directly by government), and provides details about Arts Council awards and opportunities for arts educators and individual artists.

The kinds of arts in education activities described in the directory include programmes in multimedia and the visual arts, puppet and mask making, poetry, dance, music, drama, sculpture, architecture, photography and digital film publishing. Information is also provided about open music rehearsals, guided tours and intercultural schools projects.

'With this publication, we are closing the information gap about the excellent work going on in partnerships between artists, arts organisations and the formal education system’, says Mary Cloake, Arts Council Development Director. ‘The Arts Council has long had a conviction that the arts need to be at the heart of education, and we have been conscious that excellent work is going on in different parts of the country, often in relative isolation. By bringing this evidence to the attention of a wider community, updated annually, we believe we can build better recognition of opportunities for this important work to be better supported in the future'.