September 2013 NUI Galway Launches 2013/14 Arts in Action Programme

NUI Galway has launched the 2013/2014 Arts in Action Programme, which invites students to engage with the creative arts during their studies. Aimed at students across the campus, Arts in Action offers access to a variety of international-standard arts events throughout the academic year.

This year’s programme, a development and promotion by the College of Arts, Social Sciences and Celtic Studies, is again heavily embedded into a series of academic modules in diverse areas throughout the college, which means that students, both Irish and International, will be awarded marks for attending and reflecting on some of the events that are pertinent and of major benefit to their studies within particular modules and projects.

The programme is the culmination of a three-year cycle of introducing the international arts to the students at NUI Galway, completing the journey with a focus on the richness of Irish culture particularly the art forms of the western region. The special features are legends of traditional arts and the introduction of emerging young professionals with special features on the Aran Islands.

Arts in Action allows most of the emphasis on performances from the young emerging artists who are producing high quality music, song and dance while still active and engaged students of the university community throughout Ireland. Students will also be introduced to some of the international legends of traditional music and demonstrating how the culture and the art is passed from generation to generation. The programme will also introduce young musicians from the outlying counties in the west, who are mostly third-level students, but also professional musicians holding onto their traditions and performing whenever possible with new and exciting interpretations of the music and dance.

Included are performances from: Máirtín O’Connor with two of his daughters Sinead and Ciara; Saileog Ní Cheanabháin an interpreter of extraordinary musicality in the great local art of sean-nos singing; and a concert by the NUI Galway Medical Orchestra, made up of students from the Medicine, Nursing and the Therapies Schools. The new NUI Galway Coral Scholarship, in association with St Nicholas Church, will also perform at this final event of the Arts in Action programme.

Mary McPartlan, Creative Director of Arts in Action, said: “The message of this year’s programme is to create a dynamic showcase for the young pioneers of the traditional arts in the Galway, Connemara and the wider western region. It is also the most significant outreach approach to presenting Irish Culture at its best to visiting students from all parts of the world currently studying at NUI Galway.

All of the events are free to attend and will take place from 1-2pm in The Cube in Áras Na Mac Léinn NUI Galway. The programme will run from 3 October to 20 March, 2014.

The programmes are available in the foyer of Áras Na Mac Léinn and all of the details are posted on the Arts in Action website, http://www.nuigalway.ie/arts/artsinaction.html, with up to the minute information on the new Arts in Action Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/ArtsinActionNUIGalway.

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