Galway Bay fm newsroom:
Galway city council has approved funding for 75 arts organisations in the city.
At a meeting of the local authority this afternoon, councillors were told that there were 84 applications for arts funding for 2018.
After assessment by the Arts Funding Committee chaired by Councillor Padraig Conneely, 75 groups were recommended to receive funding totaling 410 thousand euro.
The biggest recipients of funding are Galway International Arts Festival which gets 46 thousand euro, Druid Theatre Company which gets 29 thousand, Macnas which gets 24 thousand and Galway Music Residency and Galway Arts Centre which both receive 20 thousand euro.
Among the applications which were ruled out for funding was one from Galway City Gallery.
The committee deemed that the gallery didn’t provide enough evidence of its potential for survival, had no business plan and no policy.
Many councillors welcomed the funding and said it would help towards promoting Galway as Capital of Culture in 2020.
The matter which was due to be discussed later on the agenda of today’s meeting was brought forward to the top of the meeting to facilitate the arts officer, James Harrold, whose mother Mary passed away today, yet he wanted to attend the meeting to answer any questions.
Councillors offered their condolences to James Harrold and a minute of silence was observed as a mark of respect.
