Business to Arts award winners champion social inclusion and climate partnerships

Twelve projects were announced as winners at the Business to Arts Awards 2023 yesterday, which recognise partnerships between businesses and the arts.

Business to Arts is a membership-based charity that encourages private investment in the arts, to create “purposeful partnerships” between the corporate and cultural sectors.

Now in their 31st year, the awards were presented at a ceremony in the National Concert Hall on Tuesday.

Many winning projects focused on issues of climate change and social inclusion, with a key theme being the positive impacts partnerships had on their respective sectors and communities.

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Some 12 awards, including nine main categories and three bursaries worth €25,000 in total, were presented by leaders in the business community.

Notable winners on the night included The Tomar Trust and Sample-Studios, who won the award for best philanthropic support to the arts, supported by the Arts Council. Their Studios of Sanctuary residency programme supported artists from an asylum seeker, refugee or migrant background.

The Housing Agency and Irish Architecture Foundation won the award for best use of creativity in the community, supported by Irish Life, for their exhibition driving discussion around the housing crisis.

The award for best large sponsorship was granted to IPUT Real Estate for its Living Canvas, Europe’s largest digital art display.

Among the bursary winners on the night was neurodivergent, environmental, and audiovisual artist and curator AlanJames Burns, who received the €10,000 Accenture Digital Innovation in Art bursary. The work, Divergent Together, uses interactive brain-computer interface technologies as a creative medium to explore the intersection of climate change and neurodiversity.

Industries represented included construction, consulting, public services and pharmaceuticals, while the range of art forms employed included film, architecture, music, and visual and digital art.

Speaking about the awards, Minister for Arts Catherine Martin said that the awards were “a testament to the very real and significant impact that can be achieved when Ireland’s cultural and corporate sectors collaborate in pursuit of a meaningful purpose”.

“To see the benefits of these partnerships, not only on direct beneficiaries but their respective communities across the country, is truly inspiring,” she said.

Louise O’Reilly, chief executive of Business to Arts, said choosing the winners this year was especially difficult.

“We were blown away by the calibre of the projects this year and the extent to which they aimed to address very real and pressing societal challenges,” she said.

“It is very clear now that partnerships between the business and artistic community in Ireland have the ability to serve not only the objectives of the respective partners but also the communities they are embedded in and society as a whole.”