Policy Review: The Digital Arts Policy (2023–2025) in the Service of the Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle Ealaíon’s Making Great Art Work Strategy
Keywords:
Make Great Art Work Strategy, digital, policy, immersive technologies, Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle EalaíonAbstract
The Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle Ealaíon (ACI) launched its first Digital Arts Policy (2023–2025) — abbreviated throughout this review article to DAP — in early November 2023. It did so in the capacity of a national development agency that is increasingly seeking to align its work with national strategic frameworks aimed at contributing to tackling major societal challenges in Ireland and farther afield. DAP is designed to leverage knowledge, skills, and funding to support and sustain evolving digital artistic activity in the arts sector in Ireland and to facilitate opportunities for artists and audiences in the country to engage with the digital arts abroad. DAP has committed to addressing familiar and emergent issues in the Irish arts and cultural sector — with a particular focus on the five ‘pillars’ underpinning ACI’s ‘Making Great Art Work’ (MGAW) Strategy (2016–2025). In doing so, DAP takes a significant step towards making the digital arts not only more inclusive, innovative, collaborative, and widely accessible, but also a cross-disciplinary vehicle for wide-ranging societal value (Arts Council of Ireland, 2023c). This article discusses the broader policy context within which DAP was initiated and developed. It reviews selected key features of each of the five MGAW ‘pillars’ — placing a particular emphasis on the policy actions whose implementation was intended to have taken place at the time of writing this paper during the spring of 2024. Where applicable and appropriate, developments, discourses, and illustrative examples drawn from other national contexts are discussed to situate occurrences in Ireland in an international context. The article concludes by taking stock of what DAP has achieved thus far, what DAP does not cover but ideally should have, and what next steps might look like to ensure effective implementation of the policy actions put forward by DAP.
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