Opportunity
Image shown: Age & Opportunity’s Artist in Residence in a Care Setting 2019: Visual artist Andy Parsons' residency in Killybegs Community Hospital
Age Friendly Ireland in conjunction with the Creative Ireland Programme are inviting proposals from creative organisations (national and local) and individual creative practitioners to deliver regional creative initiatives for older people in 2022.
Background
Age Friendly Ireland, a shared service of local government that manages the national Age Friendly Programme, and Creative Ireland in the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport Gaeltacht and Media have developed a partnership to deliver creative initiatives for older people in 2022. This work is being rolled out in the context of creativity supporting health and wellbeing in older age.
Creative Ireland is funding this programme with a total budget of €180,000 to be spread across the six Age Friendly operational regions covering all of the country.
These initiatives will be co-designed with Older People’s Councils, which are established as consultative groups under the local Age Friendly Programme in each local authority area representing the authentic voice of older people. There is a strong social inclusion dimension, with a focus on participation, in the proposed work and a desire to include harder to reach older people in the community.
Proposals
Age Friendly Ireland is seeking proposals from a range of creative practitioners, and especially from groups or organisations with experience of working with older people and on Age Friendly creative initiatives.
The key objectives of this programme are to:
- support the participation of older people, and the wider community, in creative engagement both in terms of audience participation and producers of the creative outputs, while simultaneously offering opportunities to improve health and wellbeing, reduce loneliness and isolation and increase social connections in their communities
- enable Older People’s Councils to co-design creative programmes and support the implementation
- develop a programme that is tailored to the needs identified in the region and build on existing capacity in the region
- implement creative programmes that can be sustained beyond 2022
- support the uptake and participation of groups more at risk of social disadvantage
- ensure the diversity of communities is reflected in the participation and outputs of the programme, especially welcoming participation from those who have not previously engaged.
Timeline
Deadline for submission of proposals is 31 March 2022.
Project delivery: End April – August 2022 (It is anticipated that projects will be substantially delivered by end September 2022).
Reporting: October 2022.
Briefing Document and Application Procedure
https://agefriendlyireland.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Calls-for-Proposals-Age-Friendly-Creativity.pdf
Queries
Interested applicants can contact the Regional Age Friendly Programme Manager for more information through rleavy@meathcoco.ie or phone 046 909 7413.
