Gap Day

Participants 2023
Abi Ighodaro // Alan Mooney // Alexandra Craciun // Barry O’Donovan // Bob Kelly // Brian Keegan // Brigid Leahy // Carmel Stephens // Cathy White // Dee Finn // Dee Roycroft // Dylan Mc Gloin // Eftychia Spyridaki Emma Fisher // Eoin Kilkenny // Freya Gillespie // Gráinne O´Carroll // Hannah Lane // Helen McGrath // Ivan Owen // Jane McCarthy // Justyna Cwojdzinska // Kathleen Doherty // Laura Honan // Lauren Moukarzel // Laurie Schneider // Lesley Conroy // Lianne O'Hara // Mai Ishikawa // Ois O'Donoghue // Olga Criado Monleon // Pat Kiernan // Roseanna Purcell // Roseanne Lynch // Sam Killian // Sarah Reid // Sarah Timmins // Seán Farrelly // Seón Simpson // Sophie Coote // Susanna Dowling // Tom Moran
Gap Day
Gap Day gives professional freelance theatre practitioners across Ireland paid time to think, dream and plan. Gap Days are available to directors, devisors/makers, writers, designers, production managers and creative producers – essentially, anyone who has a prime creative role in the making of the work. We aim to be inclusive, so if you’re not sure whether you’re eligible to apply, ask us rather than assume you aren’t!
A Gap Day enables people to take time out and dedicate a day to the creative research and thinking they haven't been able to do lately. How they spend the day is up to them: reading, writing, thinking, drawing, walking, dreaming. Whatever they don’t normally have time to do; whatever they think is needed.
Participants get
- paid for their time taking Gap Days
- a workspace at an arts centre or cultural building local to them for their Gap Days
- an informal chat over a cup of tea with the director or senior member of staff in their host organisation
- lunch on each Gap Day
- access to monthly drop-in online gatherings
- a small stipend to pay an Artist's Friend for a creative conversation
- access to a fund to help people with additional needs get the most out of their Gap Day
- access to small creative thinking gatherings in person across the country
- access to one-to-one coaching to help them make plans and put their plans in motion.
Gap Day was set up by Lian Bell and Mermaid in 2015 and to date has supported almost 300 artists This year, Michelle Cahill will take over the administration of Gap Day, and we’re aiming to support approximately 40 Gap Day artists.
For more information on the Gap Day programme, download the Gap Day FAQ document here.
The deadline for applications has now closed.
Deadline for receipt of applications was Monday 9th October 2023 at 5pm.
‘It was so brilliant to have somewhere to work, to be, that was outside of my home. Felt part of the artistic community again and it gave me a huge sense of belonging. I felt important for the first time in two years. ’
Noelle Browne, actor/writer/director/facilitator, Dublin
‘It's an inspired programme… it has planted hundreds of creative seeds that will and have already grown and will continue to bear fruit for many artists…. I really believe creating the right conditions is all you have to do. Art and artists and connections and impulses and ideas and changing the world actions will all grow in the right conditions. ’
Emma O’Grady, theatre maker, Galway