Picture: Alan Place/ FusionShooters
LIMERICK Arts and Culture Exchange (L.A.C.E.) launched last night (Monday 18) at Dance Limerick, attended by arts and culture practitioners, local authority representatives and members of the business, community and voluntary sectors.
L.A.C.E. is an independent cultural representative body which works to develop, support and advocate for the cultural sector.
Made up of individuals and organisations working within communities as well as in the different strands of arts and culture, this new body will enable these sectors to support each other and to contribute in a structured way to the future development of Limerick.
Individual strands represent the different disciplines of Dance, Film, Literature, Theatre, Music, Visual Arts, Community, Food and Craft, History and Heritage and Traditional Arts.
Chairs from each Strand are elected to a central working committee by their own relevant group, making it a genuinely democratic body. It’s open to input from and interaction with others in the region.
Picture: Alan Place/ FusionShooters
L.A.C.E. has its origins in the Pillar structure, an engagement forum set up during the planning stages of Limerick 2014, City of Culture. In order to sustain relevance, build on legacy and increase public awareness of its existence, Pillar members agreed that a reinforced and independent body be formed.
They looked to the programming of Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008 as a sample template.
From Conn Murray, chief executive of Limerick: “Limerick City and County Council sees the enormous value in bringing the many strands that exist within the cultural sector together to enrich the life of the city and county. Mar a deireann an seanfhocal, ‘Ní neart go cur le chéile’.”
