CCE and RIAM Hit the High Note

Comhaltas and the Royal Irish Academy of Music hit the high note at the end of 1999 when the sponsors of their new Irish Traditional Music Examinations won the Cothú Tilestyle Sponsor of the Year Award for Best Arts Sponsorship in the Community. The CCE/RIAM project was selected from ‘the large number of imaginative and high quality nominations.’

PMPA Insurance won this award for its sponsorship of the Royal Irish Academy of Music/Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann Traditional Music Syllabus. This syllabus is the first of its kind in Ireland and provides a fully structured set of examinations in all Irish traditional music instruments.

This sponsorship gave PMPA Insurance an opportunity to highlight the valuable role it plays in communities nation-wide. Although the syllabus was designed and launched in Dublin, it was relaunched with PMPA’s involvement across the country. Examiners are sent to all areas, no matter how remote, enhancing PMPA’s long standing support of local communities and creating opportunities for publicity and corporate entertaining nationwide. Without PMPA’s financial support, this innovative and exciting new syllabus could not have been launched.

Highly Commended

Aer Lingus for its sponsorship of ‘Aer Lingus Skyfest’ the opening event of the 1999 St Patrick’s Festival. Skyfest, the largest fireworks display ever seen in Europe, launched Ireland’s Millennium celebrations to over one million citizens of Dublin and visitors to the capital, giving Aer Lingus international exposure and a new image.

AT Cross for its sponsorship of the AT Cross `Writers of the Future’ Awards. This very appropriate sponsorship hightens the AT Cross profile and perpetuates Ireland’s history of literary success by encouraging and rewarding writing talent at a young age.

Cothú - The Business Council for the Arts

Now in its tenth year of operation, Cothú has continued in its overall objective of fostering an awareness of the value of the arts to the business community and of encouraging business sponsors to work with arts organisations, to their mutual benefit. Cothú’s future development will be to encourage greater media and public awareness of the contribution of the business sponsor to the arts, to develop within the business community a greater understanding of the value of arts sponsorship as part of corporate profile and marketing strategy and to encourage within the whole community an understanding that arts sponsorship contributes to social awareness, the nurturing of talent and innovation and long term investment in the nation’s cultural life.

Presentation of Awards

The 1999 Cothú TileStyle Arts Sponsor of the Year Awards were presented at an Awards Ceremony at the O’ReiIly Hall, University College Dublin, Belfield on Thursday 18th November 1999 in the presence of Minister Seamus Brennan, TD.

The Awards

The winning companies received Awards especially created by sculptor Catherine Greene. A graduate of NCAD, Catherine works mainly with bronze which she occasionally combines with stone. Her work is based on the figurative image loosely drawn from strands of the mythological and historical.

For this year’s awards, Catherine has created a bronze entitled Remnant which suggests ‘a bygone era but with the presence of something mysterious, not yet diminished by time.’

The judges

The judging panel, which is independent of Cothú comprises:

The selection of winners from the large number of imaginative and high quality nominations, places considerable demands on the judges.

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