The Arts Council has announced the appointment of Liz Doherty as Traditional Arts Specialist. She will commence this new consulting role in early March 2005. As a member of the arts policy team reporting to Séamus Crimmins, she will be responsible for providing policy advice to the Arts Council on traditional arts, and for developmental work in this artform.

Liz Doherty is a musician, teacher, researcher and consultant from Buncrana, Co. Donegal. She graduated from the National University of Ireland, Cork with a Bachelor of Music degree in 1991 and was awarded a PhD from the University of Limerick in 1996 for her research and dissertation on the fiddle music tradition of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. She was a lecturer in the Music Department, NUI, Cork from 1994-2001 and since 2003, has been lecturing in the School of Media and Performing Arts and the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages at the University of Ulster. Since 2001, Liz has worked as a consultant on many arts and education projects throughout Ireland and Europe and has been instrumental in establishing the successful Roscommon Traditional Arts Forum.

As a fiddle player, Liz has performed worldwide as a solo artist and with a number of bands and shows. She also has a number of commercial recordings to her credit, the most recent of these released on her own record label, Busy Lizzy Records. She is a teacher of traditional music and has been involved in many youth traditional music projects both in Ireland and abroad.

This appointment follows the publication by the Arts Council in September 2004 of the report, Towards a Policy for the Traditional Arts [PDF format ~140K].

Further information: Michelle Hoctor, Press and Communications Officer, The Arts Council. Tel 01-618 0235 or 087-856 3070.

Posted: 3 February 2005