The Butler Gallery and KiIkenny Arts Festival are delighted to announce a joint ‘Highly Commended’ acknowledgement for the nomination of locally-based business, Taxback.com, for the Allianz Business to Arts Awards 2010. The nomination was made separately by both organizations for the support that Taxback.com has given to childrens’ arts projects here in Kilkenny - Kids Go Free, 2009 (Kilkenny Arts Festival) and the Solas/Kids’ Own Book Project, 2010 (Butler Gallery). This joint recognition is a wonderful thumbs up for the financial support Taxback.com continues to contribute to Kilkenny.  The company will be presented with a scrolled certificate, acknowledging their support and their CSR (Corporate/Cultural Social Responsibility) to Kilkenny.

During the 2009 Kilkenny Arts Festival 2,000 children attended for free thanks to the ground-breaking sponsorship by Taxback.com. Commenting on the initiative, festival CEO Damian Downes said “We had a concern that many families would not be able to take their children to the festival because of the difficult financial situation. We discussed this with Taxback and were delighted when they agreed to sponsor the events and allow all kids to go free. This was a very creative solution that delivered much goodwill for both Taxback.com and the festival”.

Solas, the Butler Gallery’s long-standing family programme, led by Jean Conroy and Jenny Dunne, runs fortnightly throughout the year with 20 workshops facilitating approximately 300 children. Aimed at children between the ages of 5 - 12, artists discuss the artwork on display with participating children, encouraging them to respond to and reflect on the work, while interacting with other children in the process. In honour of Solas’ tenth anniversary, Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership developed an idea for a new publication that would extend lessons learnt through the Solas programme to children around the county and country. Our motivation was “to create a publication that makes people think and understand art more” by David, Kilkenny, age 11.

“The financial support of Taxback.com and Kilkenny County Council Arts Office has allowed us to commence the second phase of the project - a series of artist interviews and workshops with artists exhibiting in the Butler Gallery’s 2010 programme. This emerged from the initial workshops held with children from the Solas programme. The third phase of the project will be the laying out and publishing of the book. The publication will be led by childrens’ questions and act as a guide to encouage and inspire others to experience the visual arts in a fulfilling way. We hope to distribute this publication among libraries and schools in the county and potentially nationally and internationally. Interviews can be viewed in an online journal of the Project, kidsown.ie/butlerproject” Jean Tormey, Education Curator, Butler Gallery

Brendan Murphy, CEO of Allianz, said: “These awards demonstrate yet again the contribution and creativity in both the business and arts communities, and its importance to our economic and cultural recovery. As Ireland Inc starts on the road to recovery, it looks to the creativity of our artists to help inspire and in many respects lead the way to economic renewal and recovery at both a local and national level.”   Irish Independent, 6 May, 2010

Both the Butler Gallery and the Kilkenny Arts Festival would like to extend their sincere congratulations and thanks to Taxback.com for being one of the few business out there that are getting intrinsically involved with their community and making a real difference.

Another major way we are marking 10 years of the Solas programme is with a book making project in partnership with Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership, who specialise in books made by children for children. Kids' Own are working with the Butler Gallery and children from the Solas programme to create a new publication that makes us think and understand art more. To help us do that we are talking with a number of the exhibiting artists from the Butler Gallery and two of the artists in the Butler Gallery Collection. We have interviewed Aideen Barry and George Vaughan, are are due to interview Jackie Nickerson at the end of the month.

See pictures, watch the interviews and read more about the development of the Project here journal.kidsown.ie/butlerproject

A New Home
In 2006, the Butler Gallery in partnership with the Kilkenny Local Authorities, was awarded €2 million under ACCESS II, a capital award from the Department of Arts, Sports & Tourism, to assist the Gallery to relocate to a new premises. The Kilkenny Local Authority agreed to allocate the Evan’s Home, located behind the Carnegie Library in the centre of town, to be the new site for the Butler Gallery.  This undertaking is being tackled on a phased modular basis.  We plan to build a contemporary addition to Evan’s Home to accommodate our important collection and facilitate our Exhibition and Education Programme.  The relocation of the Butler Gallery will be an important component in developing a cultural quarter in the heart of Kilkenny City.  Over time we aim to reclaim and restore the Evan’s Home to facilitate artist studios and fully house our Education and Community Outreach Programmes.  In doing so, we will be bringing back to life a building and site that has remained largely empty for many years, imbuing it with a renewed energy and dynamism.

Recent News
We have made progress with our plans to relocate to the Evans Home site on Barrack Lane. In 2009, we sought expressions of interest for this new development from Architectural Firms countywide.  Of the seventy-seven firms that expressed interest seven finalists were interviewed and we are delighted to announce that the winning firm is McCullough Mulvin (www.mcculloughmulvin.com).  We look forward to working closely with them and hope to achieve a design and planning permission by the end of 2010.  (read full press release)

Museum Accreditation
After much work and dedication by the Butler Gallery staff, the Gallery was awarded Full Museum Accreditation in 2008 from The Heritage Council of Ireland’s Museum Accreditation Scheme for excellence in Caring for Collections, Museum Management, and Exhibition, Education and Visitor Services.  This is a giant step forward and a serious achievement for the Butler Gallery.  This award acknowledges our work and the standards we are achieving while encouraging us to achieve best practice in all that we do.

Presenting Museum Accreditation Award:
Michael Starrett, CEO Heritage Council, Aoife Lyons, Former Collections Manager,
Anna O’Sullivan, Director, Milo FitzGerald, Chairman Butler Gallery Board

Bulletin
Download our most recent Bulletin, click here (1MB PDF)