EVENT WILL TAKE PLACE VIA ZOOM. Please register to receive link.
This event will be of interest to those working and researching in the arts and cultural policy and the creative and cultural industries.

Dr Pat Collins (University of Galway) will share research from his new publication, Galway: Making a Capital of Culture, which explores the unique interplay between culture and place development. In this talk. Dr Collins will focus on three phases of cultural development and their ancillary impact on the city and county. The first of these relate to cultural production coinciding with the formation of the Free State of Ireland, the second considers the cultural moment of the 1970s and 1980s where Galway firmly implanted itself in the national psyche as a place of culture. The final phase relates to the more recent attempt by city and culture makers to position Galway internationally as a city and place with which culture and creativity have become synonymous.

This talk will be chaired by Dr Ali FitzGibbon, Queen’s University Belfast.

Dr Pat Collins is a native of Galway and has worked as an Economic Geographer at the University of Galway since 2012. Prior to that he was a researcher at the Whitaker Institute where his work looked at the location decisions of multinational tech companies. More recently, Pat has turned his attention to Creative Economies and Cultural Production. Through a number of EU funded projects, Pat has sought to better understand the relationship between culture, creativity and production as well as identifying the unique role played by Geography. Pat has contributed to both of Galway’s designation of UNESCO City of Film and European Capital of Culture. He has published over 20 internationally peer reviewed journal articles and two books. He is currently Director of the newly formed UrbanLab Galway at the University of Galway. His newest book ‘Galway: Making a Capital of Culture’ was published by Orpen Press in 2023.

Dr Ali FitzGibbon is a Senior Lecturer in Creative & Cultural Industries Management and Director of Internationalisation for the School of Arts, English & languages at Queen’s University Belfast. She researches and publishes on decision-making, ethics, leadership and labour in the ecologies of contemporary cultural production, particularly freelancers and artists and with a focus on live and performing arts and festivals. This work is informed by her background over 25+ years as a producer, programmer and arts consultant. She was a Co-Investigator on Freelancers in the Dark (2020 – 2022), a national study of UK theatre freelancers during COVID19 and Co-Investigator from 2020 – 2023 on Future Screens NI, one of six UK Creative Clusters programmes for the creative industries.

An event as part of the NEW READS series for Cultural Policy Observatory Ireland, made possible through the support of UCD’s School of Art History and Cultural Policy.