This project is a partnership between the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media and the Arts Council.

Objectives and priorities of the award

The Late-Night Events (Pilot Programme) 2023 intends to further extend and diversify the offering for late-night activity and provide opportunities for new and exciting work, encouraging new audiences into existing cultural facilities. It will also seek to identify and address any challenges venues may associate with staying open late.

The pilot will:

• Encourage new partnerships between local authorities, arts centres, festivals, producers, other commercial and non-commercial venues and artists, particularly those operating later into the evening
• Support innovative and additional approaches to night-time arts activities
• Enhance, diversify and expand audience engagement
• Seek to identify and overcome challenges to venues and cultural spaces associated with opening late
• Advocate for a place-based approach that will build on the existing arts sector in each town or city
• Support any additional NTE interventions that may be in place (i.e. pilot NTE advisors)
• Support events promoted at reasonable cost to audiences
• Support events that pay artists and creative workers fairly.

Examples of possible models: 

• An arts centre establishing a series of events in conjunction with local creatives/event organisers where an earlier event in the evening in the arts centre is linked to a later event in another venue. The pilot runs for a set number of weeks.
• A gallery promoting a series of visual arts/music events from 23:00 onwards
• An arts centre providing admin and overhead support to a local promoter staging late-night music events in formal or informal venues
• A series of electronic/folk/contemporary arts events in different venues in conjunction with the NTE adviser and local promoters.

Who can apply?

The lead partner must be an arts centre that has been in receipt of Arts Council Art Centre Funding or Arts Grant Funding (arts centres) within the last five years. Events may or may not take place in the arts centres: the arts centre may be centrally involved or simply act as the administrator for the pilot.

Partners might include local promoters, local-authority night-time advisers, and operators of pop-up venues, other arts centres, other commercial and non-commercial venues festivals, producers and artists.

 What may you apply for?

The costs of promoting and staging late-night events in any artform (late-night events are those programmed after c. 22:00 and continue after midnight).

The application requires a full listing of costs and income, which will be assessed for feasibility, affordability for audiences, fair fees to artists and creative personnel, etc.

Up to €60,000 will be available for the lead arts centre for programming.