4 ALLIANZ BUSINESS TO ARTS AWARDS 2011 Allianz Business to Arts Awards 2011 Winners Modern day heros


BNP Paribas’ sponsorship of IMMA’s ‘The Moderns’ exhibition turned out to be a perfect opportunity for the bank to give back in a cultural and local context


with its support of IMMA’s recent ‘The Moderns’ exhi- bition has seen BNP Paribas become associated with one of the most celebrated, high- profile cultural events in Ire- land over the last few years. Winner of the Best Large Sponsorship award at the Allianz Business to Arts Awards, The Moderns was a major exhibition of modern art from IMMA’s own collec- tion, joined with supporting material from a variety of other historical State sources. The exhibition, which took over most of the museum from last October until April of this year, attracted 135,000 visitors, 28pc of whom had never been to IMMA before. According to Hugo Jellett, head of development at IMMA, the exhibition had a profound effect on the coun- try culturally and was also hugely important for the museum itself, which has not done quite as much for Irish art as it has for internation- al art over the last 10 years. He stresses that BNP Parib- as’ support had a big impact on how the museum was able to promote and enhance the exhibition, which ultimately turned it into one of its most successful events to date. While Jellett had spent sev- eral years trying to attract BNP Paribas as a partner, the nature of the exhibition and scale of the sponsorship were completely different to what he had originally envisaged. His initial objective was to


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get BNP Paribas to emulate what it has done for many


IPPING its toe into the Irish arts sponsor- ship waters for the first time


and in that regard was an optimistic and celebratory project at a time that the arts required support,” he says. Without a sponsor in place for an exhibition there is always a possibility of com- promise in some aspect of the show. “If no sponsorship comes, it can still take place, but the impact may not reach its potential” says Jellett. So, as a result of receiving a substantial amount of money from BNP Paribas, the museum was in a posi- tion to produce an impor- tant 500-page book on The Moderns and also had a budget to develop and run a TV and radio campaign. “Doing TV ads for art exhi- bitions is not something usu- ally attainable,” says Jellett. “It helped snowball this whole promotional effect for the exhibition.”


Another outcome was funding by the Department of Arts to create an online gallery. “What the BNP Paribas


F.E. McWilliam’s ‘Girl Waiting’ which was part of The Moderns exhibition at IMMA. BNP Paribas’ sponsorship enabled IMMA to produce a seminal book on Modernism in Ireland


years in Paris – namely to sponsor a contemporary art event. “I offered them all sorts of French artists com- ing up but their reaction was ‘No, we want something which is recognised as being really important to Ireland’.” Gilles de Decker, CEO of BNP in Dublin, explains that


when the idea of sponsoring The Moderns was presented to the bank, it was felt that the collaboration was a good fit to expand the philan- thropic footprint of the group in a local context. “It was essentially an exhibition of the nation’s collection, the largest of its kind to date,


support did was turn a rela- tively straightforward, exhi- bition into probably the biggest exhibition we’ve had,” concludes Jellett. “In a chal- lenging time, there was a real swelling of pride, a sense of achievement that happened to come at a good time for the country. I think it made quite a lot of people come and visit, and keep returning.” According to de Decker,


BNP Paribas regards its spon- sorship of The Moderns as a successful partnership with IMMA. “It supported a land- mark exhibition for the museum while providing both access and awareness to a wide public including our clients and employees.”


Cast an innovative light


Cavan town was seen through a whole new medium during Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann 2010 when an installation was shown on the local Ulster Bank


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ne of the reasons Cavan County Council won the Jim McNaughton Perpetual Award


for Best Commissioning Prac- tice in the Allianz Business to Arts Awards this year was how the project it supported, ‘Cast- ing Light’ by John Byrne, made use of modern technology. “It was very innovative in terms of how it used the medi- um of screens to show images in an outdoor setting and the content wowed everyone who saw it,” says Allianz Business to Arts Awards judge Gerard McNaughton, retail director at TileStyle. “What we really liked was how great it was to see a coun- ty council using funds in such a different way, encouraging


A selection of installation images from John Byrne’s Casting Light, commissioned by Cavan County Council, which won the Jim McNaughton Perpetual Award for Best Commissioning Practice in the Allianz Business to Arts Awards


the installation exceeded all expectations. “The Fleadh audience was captivated. Peo- ple posted it on YouTube and it seemed to take on a life of its own. DV4 was instrumental in getting it out there globally to make Casting Light a win- dow into Cavan town, helping to present it as an innovative, forward-thinking place.” Digital media company DV4 gave its services free to work with Byrne in creating Casting Light. “We spent six months working with John filming dancers, snakes and lizards and made a 13-minute piece that played on a loop from 9am until 4am during the Fleadh. We webcasted it on the internet so we could watch it from Dublin. Some-


Sunday IndependentMay 11, 2011


young artists to use modern means to present things to people. The council really got involved in creating a specta- cle and it made a massive impact. It’s more difficult to get that sort of impact with sculpture – this was a much braver choice.”


Casting Light is a site-spe- cific installation architec- turally mapped onto the Ulster Bank building in the centre of Cavan town during


Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann 2010. It featured a sequence of animated imagery inspired by the theme ‘Contemporary Ireland’.


Rhonda Tidy, arts officer at


Cavan County Council, explains that the whole process arose out of the fact that the council had already been looking at the architec- ture of the town. “We invited John down to explore possibilities further


in the context of the Fleadh with the objective of show- casing contemporary arts in the context of a traditional arts celebration. “John has a long history of work that relates to the border and we thought he might have an interesting approach. We like his sense of humour and the fact that he’s worked across many mediums. He is a great mind.” Tidy says the reaction to


one then put it on Facebook and by the end of the week 20,000 people had watched it,” says company director Graeme Kelly.


DV4 works with artists for free as part of their research and development process, he adds. “Artists come to us with mad ideas and we work out how to deliver them. Casting Light was one of the first high definition building projections in the country.”


Bringing Mexico to West Cork


With the help of sponsorship from the Barry & Fitzwilliam Corona brand, a West Cork film festival has grown into an event of international standards since its launch just two years ago.


THIS year the Fastnet Short Film Festival takes the hon- ours for the Best Small Sponsorship – under ¤25,000 value category in the Allianz Business to Arts Awards. The annual festival, which is held in the West Cork seaside village of Schull and brings together established and first-time filmmakers, has already attracted two film produc- tions to the local area. Its organisers, meanwhile, have established a rela- tionship with the Mexican Institute of Cinematogra- phy to bring a Mexican strand to the programme – an obvious fit for the spon- sor.


When Barry & Fitzwilliam managing director Michael Barry was initially approached by the event’s organisers in 2009, his company had already been sponsoring the Cork Film Festival for two years. “I’ve always liked film and I thought we might get a share of noise for Corona by sponsoring the Cork event,” says Barry. “We would believe that


everyone who goes to the cinema is a potential Coro- na customer, or anyone who loves film is a potential Corona customer. “When the Schull people came to me, I was a bit ret- icent because I was doing one film festival already. But I said I’d give them


some time. After about five minutes I decided I’d have to support these people, because they had such pas- sion and enthusiasm for what they were doing. “There was also an ele- ment of supporting Schull, because West Cork has been good to us as a business over the last 29 years. It was a bit about putting something back into the community.” This year, the festival faced an additional chal- lenge when the local hotel, which had previously pro- vided the main screening rooms, was put into NAMA. The novel solution was to stream the films to ven- ues all over the village, including pubs, restaurants, shops, the library and on sides of buildings. As the organisers said: “We ask the question ‘What is a cin- ema?’ and look for answers in every corner of the vil- lage”.


According to Barry, the benefit for Corona of the sponsorship has been great exposure. And, the fact that this year’s winning film was, by coincidence, Mexican has been a bonus, he says. “In terms of the exposure and the PR activity that they generate, the column inch- es are a wow, and that’s how we would measure it,” he adds. “It’s a very good spon- sorship from that point of view.”


A virtual window designed to reduce the anxiety of hospital isolation was one of the winners in this year’s Allianz Business to Arts Awards. Sorcha Corcoran talks to Denis Roche about his novel invention


A room with a view


Open Window allows patients to connect to the outside world – Katie Vierling is a participant in the project, which won the Bursary for Commissioned Artists at the Allianz Business to Arts Awards Photo taken by Anthony Edwards


WINNER of the Jim McNaughton/TileStyle ¤10,000 Bursary for Com- missioned Artists at the Allianz Business to Arts Awards, Denis Roche, has developed an interactive web platform to combat the stress of long-term isolation called ‘Open Window’.


The seaside village of Schull in Cork is the backdrop to the burgeoning Fastnet Short Film Festival, which is sponsored by Corona. Michael Barry of Barry & Fitzwilliam with Nick Kelly celebrate the launch and events surrounding the festival, including the people- powered Cycle Cynema


Roche came up with the idea in 2001 after a friend of his had spent some time in the bone marrow transplant unit in St James’s Hospital in Dublin. “Patients in the unit were complaining about the bad use of the windows while they were being treated. The view was of waste ground and they couldn’t get a sense of the outside world,” he says. “So I made a proposal to the Bone Marrow for Leukaemia Trust around a virtual window using a projection system and set up


a prototype. Once that was in place I started a five-year clinical trial in 2004, sup- ported by the Irish Cancer Society. “This was the first large- scale randomised prospec- tive trial of an arts intervention in a hospital anywhere. It was the first time that the two fields of medicine and the arts com- prehensively came together in this way.”


Roche put equipment into eight rooms at James’s Hos- pital. There were 199 people involved in the study, 96 who had exposure to Open Win- dow. “The trial showed a signif- icant reduction in anxiety for the patients who had access to Open Window and a 50pc improvement in the overall patient experience; 75pc found it provided a sense of connection with the


outside world,” explains Roche.


Over time, Roche com- missioned 13 other artists to produce work for Open Win- dow, such as Barry Cooke, Brian Maguire and Emma Finnucane. The platform includes photographic streams and video, with the patient using a remote con- trol to select the artwork they want from a menu. An important aspect of Open Window is how it allows families and friends to get involved. “Family mem- bers and friends can upload media and send live photo- graphic streams. They took photos of places that really mattered to the patient and their imagination really went to work. It was a means for families to be more involved in the caring process.” James’s Hospital has commissioned Roche to


install Open Window to 22 rooms and he is currently working on projects with Kil- dare County Council for nursing homes and hospi- tals as well as with Carlow Mental Health Services. Gerard McNaughton, retail


director, TileStyle, says Open Window reflects the whole ethos of Business to Arts, which is to try and get arts integrated into the real world. “This project was fan- tastic in terms of bringing art to people and spreading the word about it.” “In addition, it had a very


practical, beneficial effect on people dealing with serious issues and was proven to improve their well-being.” McNaughton says the judging committee’s hope is that Roche will use the bur- sary to continue to develop this project so it grows and stays current.


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