merrion street

Jimmy Deenihan TD, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, will today (Tuesday 4 September 2012) present awards at the 21st Annual Allianz Business to Arts Awards at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre.

These awards, now in their 21st year, showcase the benefits of arts and business organisations working together. Awards are made in a number of categories, with the award event now a major fixture in the arts calendar.

Speaking ahead of the award ceremony, Minister Deenihan said:

"The Allianz Business to Arts awards recognise what can be achieved when business and arts organisations work together. Deepening these partnerships is something that I strongly support, and for that reason I am particularly happy to present the awards this evening.

"The innovation that Business to Arts has brought to this issue has been to build strong relationships between business and arts communities, and to reinforce the importance of those relationships through events such as this award ceremony.

“Philanthropy in general is reasonably well developed in Ireland, but this is not always the case in the arts and culture sector. Philanthropy for arts and culture is underdeveloped in Ireland compared to other sectors and compared to other countries, particularly the United States.

"To support increased private funding of the arts, earlier this year I launched a Philanthropy Leverage Initiative to incentivise arts organisations to proactively seek new and multi-annual relationships with sponsors. Today’s constraints on the taxpayer mean that we have to look for innovative ways to address funding issues."

The highlight of Business to Arts activities is the Allianz sponsored annual awards ceremony which recognises business sponsor ship of the arts as well as collaboration and creativity in business and arts partnerships. In conclusion, Minister Deenihan commented "I would like to wish all those who are in the running for an award the very best of luck at this years' ceremony."

For further details please see link below.

http://www.businesstoarts.ie/awards/awards-allianz-ceremony/