Shannon is to benefit from a €40,000 investment from the Arts Council.

€40,000 has been set aside to develop and sustain new creative opportunities for all age groups in Shannon as part of a research award in the Creative Places Programme.

Creative Places is an opportunity for places which had not benefitted from sustained arts investment in the past to build local arts programmes which will benefit the people who live in these places. Each programme will have a coordinator or researcher who will begin local conversations to discuss and plan a range of creative and participatory projects.

The programme builds upon existing local cultural strengths and is based on dialogue, listening to what matters locally and reaching people who may have barriers in participating in an active cultural life.

Employment opportunities will be created for coordinators, artists and researchers interested in place based arts development, the Arts Council have said. A researcher for Shannon is to be appointed in the summer.

Director of the Arts Council, Maureen Kennelly stressed the importance of public investment in the arts reaching and benefiting communities in a sustained and meaningful way. “We look forward to seeing the ambitious new projects that these inspiring communities create together and we are excited by the prospect of supporting them to celebrate and animate new places.”

Clare County Council will manage the Shannon project. County Arts Officer, Siobhán Mulcahy was confident the cultural ambitions of the town would be realised. She stated, “Shannon is unique, the only new town to be developed in Ireland in the last century. The pioneers who established its first communities are now the older generation, a generation that has shown resilience and fortitude. Shannon is a town of welcomes, it welcomed and developed new communities from near and far when it was established, and this warmth is evident today in its community spirit”.