THE world’s first Masters in Festive Arts was launched at the University of Limerick’s Irish World Academy of Music by Arts Minister Jimmy Deenihan on Monday last.
The one year, full-time programme includes practical, scholarly and performance-based aspects of festival studies.
Students can apprentice with a festival to gain festival coordination and design skills, as well as being introduced to the study of festival, a survey of global festivity, and festival management and curatorship.
Describing the programme as a “global first” Professor Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin said it was the university’s gift to the city of Limerick as it prepared for its City of Culture status.
“It will intersect with the City of Culture initiative, and will serve as one of the important legacy projects of the City of Culture 2014 year. Graduates will work on a practical level with festivals – and perhaps specifically with a new international arts festival proposed by the Irish World Academy as a further legacy project for the City of Culture year 2014.”
A feasibility study for a major international festival was commissioned by the Irish World Academy in 2010 and copies of this study were made available at the launch.
Minister Deenihan said the course was “an excitingly unique post graduate programme” which is sure to attract graduate students from around the world.
“In offering a programme that will encourage new ways of viewing the design and organisation of festivals, it will without doubt increase the international attractiveness of our many festivals already in existence. I have every confidence that this innovative programme will also ultimately lead to new festivals of a globally significant nature”, he added.
Currently, over 25 per cent of postgraduate students at the UL Irish World Academy are from outside the EU.
via A world first for UL (289 with pic) | Limerick Post Newswrite.
