Opera Bursary Award

The purpose of the award is to support professional artists at any stage of their career to develop their art practice. It provides artists with the time and resources to think, research, reflect and critically engage with their art.

Objectives and priorities of the award

The objective of the Opera Bursary Award is to support individual professional artists in the field of music in the substantive development of their artistic practice. The award emphasises the value and benefit to an artist’s development derived from an in-depth process of engagement with their artistic practice at any stage of their professional career. The award therefore provides artists with the time and resources to think, research, reflect and engage with their artistic practice by enabling them to do one or more of the following: 

• Spend focused time substantively developing their artistic practice  Spend time researching/thinking about/developing a new idea for future dissemination
• Spend time developing their technical skills in a particular area
• Spend time developing/learning new skills related to their practice or area of interest
• Spend time working with a mentor or collaborator(s) to develop an idea or to assist in developing or upskilling within a particular area of the applicant’s practice or an area related to the applicant’s practice Spend time developing an idea in collaboration with a potential production partner(s)
• Undertake a short period of training by way of master classes or other professional training opportunities (whether national or international, online or in person)
• Purchase a limited amount of equipment and materials to assist with the development of their practice. (Note: this can be no more than 15% of the value of the overall request for support.)

Potential proposals could be those that:

• Enable a composer, librettist conductor or performer working in any opera genre to buy time for the development of their artistic practice 
• Facilitate the development or completion of a specific body of artistic work 
• Enable artists to invest time in focused advanced study, with appropriate mentoring, of a particular repertoire area or other area of practice resulting in substantive artistic development. 

Strategic priorities The Arts Council has identified the following as strategic priorities for support through this award: 

• Professional development of emerging Irish composers, librettists, conductors and opera directors of proven promise and diverse backgrounds
• Professional artists working on the creation or performance of new Irish opera, or on performing editions of historic Irish opera not yet generally available 
• Professional artists developing mentor-guided specialist periodperformance practice as conductors, instrumentalists or singers