Call for Applications for ‘In The Window’ at the Liverpool Irish Festival 2021

Posted 17.03.21

The Liverpool Irish Festival are delighted to invite designers and applied artists to submit work related to the Liverpool Irish Festival 2021 theme of ‘Exchange’, to go on display at the Bluecoat Display Centre from 1 – 31 October 2021, supported by Design & Crafts Council Ireland.

This is an exciting opportunity for an Irish maker (emerging or established) to display their work for one month In the Window at the Bluecoat Display Centre, as part of LIF 2021.

For more information about the theme for 2021, please visit the LIF website.

Deadline for applications: Sunday 27 June 2021. Visit the Bluecoat Display Centre website for criteria and submission requirements.

This is an incredible chance to:

  • Receive an exhibition in an award-winning gallery (Bluecoat Display Centre), which is itself housed in the oldest combined arts centre in the country (Bluecoat) and in one of the busiest city centre shopping complexes in Britain (Liverpool One)
  • Feature in a 20k run of the Festival newspaper along with other Festival promotional materials
  • Involve new audiences in your work, via an online event during the Festival
  • Sell your work
  • Increase your profile with an active buying market
  • Expand your portfolio

Ideally, you will want to share your work, process and ‘brand’ and therefore you will be prepared to:

  • Take part in an online studio event as part of the Festival, that allows the audience to meet you and your work (not critical, but desirable)
  • Answer questions about your work for an article (via email)
  • Have an online presence to promote, which you will share details of in your application (again, this isn’t essential, but we hope to help promote you and your work, so this would be beneficial
  • All courier fees for the exhibit will be covered by the Design and Craft Council of Ireland.

Past exhibitors have included Mike Byrne (2020), Rory Shearer (2019), Berina Kelly (2018), Christy Keeney (2017), Catherine Keenan (2016) and Sara Flynn (2015).

Partnership and remit
For six years the Bluecoat Display Centre has partnered the Liverpool Irish Festival, selecting a contemporary Irish maker to exhibit In the Window for the month of October. This year, we would like the In the Window maker to link in to #LIF2020’s theme ‘Exchange’. We invite submissions and designs from producers working in:

  • Ceramics
  • Jewellery
  • Glass
  • Textiles, including constructed textiles
  • Wood, including basketry
  • Metal, including precious metals
  • Paper and mixed media
  • Employing new technologies or traditional techniques

Criteria and submission requirement
Open to any professional Irish craft maker, living and working in Ireland, in any discipline – although consideration should be given to suitability for display In the Window.

To submit a proposal, please email crafts@bluecoatdisplaycentre.com with:

  • A selection of 5 images (maximum size per image 2MB), with prices of your proposed submissions
  • A statement about your work and how it is relevant to the theme of ‘Exchange’
  • A current biography or CV
  • The exhibition space dimensions can be viewed as a PDF here.

The deadline for submission is Sunday 27 June 2021, with announcement of the selection made within 6 weeks.

More Info

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