This bursary provides a significant opportunity for practitioners of any discipline (visual, performing, musical, literature, media, technology) to deliver a project responding to the emerging digital society. The bursary will be open to individuals and groups in Ireland and abroad and the recipient will be launched at the Digital Transformations conference in Ballina on the 19th of May.

An information session for potential applicants will form part of the conference programme.

The purpose of the bursary is increase awareness of the digital society and to make artistic responses to the digital society a more central part of the debate around the digital society.

"I'm thrilled to be offering this bursary as a way of supporting people who want to explore the digital society in their work, and to put that response centre stage in the debates happening today about what kind of society is emerging via digital technologies," said conference director Scott Coombs. "Enriching human contact and the human voice is essential for this transformation to be beneficial," he said "and this artistic response needs to be heard not just on the street, but in classrooms and boardrooms as well. The digital society is throwing arts, policy, education, culture, media, technology and business together in ways that only the arts can really fathom." 

 
See http://digitaltransformations.org/busary for full details.



About Digital Transformations

Digital Transformations is an international gathering of artists, academics, technologists, investors and policy makers who want to explore the future together, who want to have a meaningful conversation about the relationship between creativity, art, and digital tech.

Digital Transformation will take place at the Ballina Arts Centre, Mayo on the 19th and 20th of May. Ballina was chosen as the location for this because its a magnificent and beautiful location, and because its important to start this conversation away from the traditional tech locations.

This new international conference focuses on the cultural impacts of the digitisation of society and human experience. Featuring speakers from the worlds of technology, film, arts, culture and creative industries, attendees will come face to face with the digital society, with the people who are making it happen, the artists who are trying to find meaning in it, and the academics, and policy makers who are trying make sense of it. You too will have a chance to participate in the debate.

This 2-day conference brings a panoply of speakers from Ireland, Europe and North America to share radical thinking about the digital society. Technology speakers include Glyn Darkin and Ronan Laffan; institutional speakers include Steve Woodall from the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco, Lean Benson from the National Gallery of Ireland; artists include Paula Kehoe, Ian Keaveny, Siobhan Clancy, Leah Hilliard, plan b performance, Cate Field, Joanna Hopkins, Alexandra Jonsson and many more. Economist and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin will appear via video link from Washington DC, and an evening panel featuring novelist Julian Gough and Paul McBride will be chaired by Seán Rocks, of RTÉ's Arena programme. The evening entertainment will be provided by Kieran Quinn (piano), Seamie O'Dowd (guitar) and Joe Kelly (bodhran).

Day two will include focus groups where people can share their views on each of the conference's four main themes: Art for What's Sake, Digital Human, Networked Personality and Manifesto.

Find out more