The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin, today announced six new appointments to the Board of the Arts Council for a period of up to five years.
The Minister has announced the appointment of:
- Andrew Clancy; Director of Clancy Moore Architects and Professor of Architecture at Kingston School of Art
- Aoife Granville; Lecturer in Folklore/Béaloideas in UCC & Traditional Musician
- Brian Lavery; Manager at Google, former chair of The Ark and former New York Times reporter
- Linda Coogan Byrne; (They/She) Music Industry Consultant, DEI & Culture Change Specialist
- Philomena Poole; Former Chief Executive of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council
- Róise Goan; Artistic Director and Co-CEO of Artsadmin, UK
The Minister has also reappointed Fearghus Ó Conchúir from December 2021 as Deputy Chair of the board.
The appointments follow a public call for applications on www.Stateboards.ie and an assessment process.
Commenting on the appointments, Minister Martin said:
"I am delighted to appoint six candidates of such high calibre and congratulate them on their appointments. The Board is central to the governance, oversight and strategic direction of the Arts Council and I thank all the Board Members for giving their time and playing a part in supporting the arts.
I wish all appointees the very best during their terms and thank them for taking on these very important roles."
BIOS
Andrew Clancy
Andrew Clancy is an architect and an educator. Graduating from UCD in 2001, he established Clancy Moore Architects with Colm Moore in 2008. He completed his PhD by practice with RMIT in 2017.
Having previously worked in Queens University Belfast and as Visiting Professor to the Aarhus School of Architecture, he was appointed as full professor of architecture to the Kingston School of Art in 2016.
His research concerns the methods of critical practice today, and embraces the work he does and the research and pedagogic innovations he leads in academia. With a view to advancing a conversational method which embraces the full plurality of subjective, contingent and imposed limits that operate in practice, his work has led to Clancy Moore Architects being voted winner of the Young Architect of the Year in 2018, the Peter Davey Award in 2019 and receiving an AAI Downes medal.
He sees his role with the Arts Council as a means to support the full richness both of architectural practice, and in the other arts.
Aoife Granville
Aoife Granville is from Dingle, Kerry, and is a performer, educator and researcher who holds a PhD in Folklore/Ethnomusicology (Dingle Wren & European Carnival Cultures). She lectures in Traditional & Popular Music, Folklore & Festival and currently holds the post of Lecturer in Folklore/Béaloideas at the Folklore Department, UCC.
Previously, she lectured at the Department of Music (UCC), the International Centre for Music Studies at Newcastle University (UK) and with visiting US universities to Ireland.
Aoife is regarded as an influential figure in the contemporary Irish fluting tradition and is currently working on her third solo album.
A regular contributor to radio and television, Aoife works and publishes in both Irish and English. She currently sits on the Board of Directors of Achill International Harp Festival and is part of Culture Ireland's 'Expert Panel' and the Arts Council of Ireland peer review panels. She was the Director of Ionad Cultúrtha Arts Centre in Gaeltacht Mhúscraí from January 2019 to December 2021 and previously sat on a variety of boards and committees pertaining to Arts Centres for Dingle as well as the External Advisory Board to the Vice-President and later President of UCC, 2018-2021.
Aoife has also been involved in festival management as well as arts advocacy and mentorship for many years.
Brian Lavery
Brian Lavery is a manager at Google, where he manages European e-commerce partnerships. He was previously European managing director of AccuWeather, the world’s largest weather forecasting and media company, after holding commercial management, marketing, and consulting roles at Twitter, Vodafone, and McKinsey & Co.
Earlier in his career, Brian served as the Ireland reporter for the New York Times, covering the arts as well as current affairs, politics, business, and Northern Ireland. He was also an independent arts critic covering theatre and dance for Irish media including the Irish Independent and RTÉ.
Brian recently served as chair of The Ark, Ireland’s cultural centre for children, during a nine-year period on the board. As chair, he led a comprehensive governance improvement program, and helped to craft and adapt the organisation’s strategy before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.
He also served on the board of BirdWatch Ireland, including a term as treasurer. He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, a Professional Certificate in Corporate Governance from the Institute of Public Administration, and a BA in English Literature from Yale University, where he wrote his thesis on the role of newspapers and media in Ulysses.
Linda Coogan-Byrne
Linda Coogan Byrne is a Music Industry Consultant with 15 years of experience in the international and domestic music industry and is CEO of Award-Winning PR & Marketing Company Good Seed PR. Linda is also an activist and campaigner for gender diversity and equality and is managing director of Culture Change company Why Not Her?.
Hailed as the person who has retuned Irish and UK radio airplay towards gender parity, her Gender Disparity Data Reports, focusing on the lack of diversity and gender parity across Radio in the UK and Ireland, have become one of the biggest equality movements in the music industry.. Linda was named as one of the Top 100 most influential womxn in Ireland (in 2021) who are choosing to challenge perceptions to change the world.
Linda divides her time working as a Music Consultant/Publicist and Culture Changer/DEI specialist between both of her companies. She represents well-known acts and bands such as Cyndi Lauper, Suzanne Vega, Amanda Palmer, Counting Crows, Madness, Duran Duran, REM, Eleanor McEvoy, Aoife Scott, The Saw Doctors, Aslan, Groove Armada, Underworld, The Prodigy, Röyksopp and many more over the years. Her work also includes working with brands and companies such as RTE, BBC, IKEA, ITV, AXA, ESPN, Volkswagen, Dominos Pizza, O2, Land Rover, Lexus, and many more leading brands worldwide.
Linda works with record labels and management companies such as Cooking Vinyl Records, Sony, Warner, BMG, EMI, Atlantic Records, Universal, V2 Records, Thirty Tiger and many more all over the world.
Linda also freelance writes for various press publications in print and online including webzines and magazines. She launched a brand new Podcast Series called the Why Not Her? Podcast in 2021, that focuses on amplifying the voices of womxn across a myriad of industries around the world as well as activists and culture changers.
Philomena Poole
Philomena Poole is the former Chief Executive of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council (retired in May 2021). She was previously County Manager in Louth County Council and served in South Dublin County Council for many years.
In each of these roles she was responsible for the economic, social, cultural and environmental development of the county, leading large teams to deliver on significant infrastructure and social programmes as well as driving organisation transformation. During her time in DLR County Council, Philomena had full oversight of ambitious arts and library development projects and successfully established the Music Generation programme there.
She has worked on leadership programmes and philanthropy initiatives with Co-Operation Ireland and holds a Master’s degree in Executive Coaching. She is a member of the National Oversight and Audit Commission.
Róise Goan
Róise works as the Artistic Director of Artsadmin in London. Prior to her appointment she worked as Guest Dramaturg at Vooruit in Belgium, and as a freelance arts programmer in Ireland. Under the banner of The Local Group, she created performance projects with artists and communities of place and interest in off-the-grid locations between 2015 and 2019.
She studied Drama and Theatre Studies at Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 2004. In 2008, she was appointed as Director of the Dublin Fringe Festival, which she led for 5 years, and where she established Fringe Lab, a year-round studio and artist-support programme.
Highlights of her freelance career include working with Prime Cut in Belfast on artist development, and two ECOC bids including Three Sisters 2020. Alongside her work in the performing arts, she has written for television, most notably the TG4 series Aifric.
Fearghus Ó Conchúir
Fearghus is a choreographer and dance artist who has collaborated with artists and experts from other disciplines to make film and live performances that have been seen across Europe, in the US, Australia, Hong Kong and China. He has been commissioned to make work for companies such as Croí Glan Integrated Dance Company and Maiden Voyage. His major work, The Casement Project, was part of ART:2016, the Arts Council’s programme for Ireland 2016 and of the Culture Ireland International Programme for that centenary. It was also co-commissioned by 1418NOW as part of the UK’s commemorations of the First World War. The project combined work on stage, a dance film for television, a day of dance on a beach, academic symposia in universities and at the British Library, a club night and multiple workshops.
Brought up in the Ring Gaeltacht, Fearghus completed degrees in English and European Literature at Magdalen College Oxford, before training at London Contemporary Dance School. He has been Curator of the Artistic Programme at Firkin Crane in Cork, Trustee of the BBC Performing Arts Fund and a board member of Dance Ireland, Dance Digital, Project Arts Centre and Create. The first Ireland Fellow on the Clore Leadership Programme, he continues to contribute to the programme’s work, in the UK and internationally, as a facilitator, coach and speaker. Fearghus is a Project Artist, a member of Project Arts Centre’s associate artist scheme. In 2017, he completed his PhD as an inaugural Irish Research Council Scholar at Maynooth University’s Dept. of Geography. In 2018, he became Artistic Director of National Dance Company Wales.