Continued success achieved through Ireland Newfoundland Partnership

Industry, Trade and Rural Development Minister Judy Foote today congratulated the Ireland Newfoundland Partnership for recently awarding 19 bursaries in the areas of business, culture and youth development at a news conference in Ireland yesterday. The bursaries, worth over $190,000 CDN, were awarded to Irish recipients, who will use the funding for projects aimed at improving relations with Newfoundland and Labrador.

"This recent awarding of bursaries further demonstrates the continued partnership which exists between Ireland and Newfoundland and Labrador," said Minister Foote. "The 19 projects selected through the 2003 Grant Scheme Awards will help to further develop and strengthen the ties between our province and Ireland while providing mutually beneficial initiatives between both our regions."

Michael Ahern, T.D., Minister for Trade and Commerce, and Chairman of the Ireland Newfoundland Partnership Board, announced the 2003 Grand Scheme Awards at a news conference in Ireland yesterday. The news conference was held on Fota Island near Cork on the southern coastline of Ireland where the 18th and 19th century migrations from Ireland to Newfoundland took place. Over half of the projects to receive funding originated from institutions and individuals along the southern coastline from Wexford to Kerry.

The Ireland Newfoundland Partnership was established by the Government of the Republic of Ireland in 2001 to enhance the business and cultural links being developed through the 1996 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Ireland and Newfoundland and Labrador.

The Ireland Newfoundland Partnership works with the locally-based Ireland Business Partnerships, established in 1997 by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, to develop initiatives under the MOU. The Ireland Business Partnerships brings together business, education, government and community representatives in Newfoundland and Labrador with a particular interest in the Newfoundland-Ireland connection.

Ireland Newfoundland Partnership previously awarded 18 cultural bursaries last July, which totaled approximately $210,000 CDN. For more information on the Ireland Newfoundland Partnership, visit the Web site at www.inp.ie

Media contact: Tansy Mundon, Communications, (709) 729-4570.

1. "Out on the Ocean � Voices of the North Atlantic"
A collaborative performance between the Irish Youth Choir and the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra featuring the premiere of a newly commissioned work by a young Irish composer, inspired by the shared vocal traditions of Ireland and Newfoundland.

2. "Bloomsday Cabaret"
COCO Television Productions Limited, Dublin and Rock Island Productions, Newfoundland will shoot a film, which will be produced in both Ireland and Newfoundland, based on the music that featured in the work of James Joyce. The film will provide a colourful tour of legendary Dublin, a glimpse of the connections between place and people in Irish St. John�s and Dublin, and an exhilarating musical experience.

3. "Baseline Study of Fluid Inclusions from Newfoundland Basin"
Ms. Therese Shryane and Dr. Martin Feely, Geofluids Research Centre, NUI Galway A 2,300m deep hole is currently being drilled into the Newfoundland Basin as part of the Ocean Drilling Programme (Leg 210). An international team of earth scientists will use the recovered rock core to study the Geological history of the North Atlantic region. The GRC at NUIG will contribute by studying microscopic fluid inclusions trapped by rock forming minerals in the Newfoundland basin as it developed hundreds of millions of years ago. Comparisons will be made with Irish offshore basins e.g. Porcupine and Celtic Basins.

4. "Development of Collaborative Marine Research Strategy between Ireland and Newfoundland in Scallop Mariculture"
Mr. John Slater, Letterkenny Institute of Technology, will work with the Marine Institute in Newfoundland to develop improved techniques for scallop mariculture. This will be based on enhanced spat production using marine biotechnology to allow the identification of spat collection sites and the precise time for spat collection. Techniques for growing the collected seed/juveniles will focus on ranching within fenced seabed plots.

5. "Mediating the Divide"
Susan Motherway Institute of Technology, Tralee and Siamsa Tire, specialists in the areas of music, dance and theatre from St. John�s, Newfoundland, will collaborate with staff of the National Folk Theatre (Siamsa Tire) and lecturing staff of the BA in Folk Theatre Studies (Institute of Technology, Tralee) in a weeklong project in which workshops will be held in the traditional arts of Ireland and Newfoundland. The culmination of a weeks work will be presented to the public on the final day. In addition, footage recorded during the week will provide material for further research.

6. "Turning Ordinary Lives into Theatre � a collaboration between Bere Island, Ireland and Placentia Bay, Newfoundland"
Bere Island Projects Group intends to establish a Bere Island Theatre Troupe. The Troupe will travel to Newfoundland to observe and perform jointly with the Tramore Theatre Troupe. The two groups will perform J.M. Synge�s one-act play �In the Shadow of the Glen� at the international Sound Symposium, in St. John�s, demonstrating similarities in rhythms of speech and how people in Placentia Bay have held onto their Irish rhythms of speech.

7. "However Blow the Winds � Anthology of Poetry from Ireland and Newfoundland and Labrador"
Dr. John Ennis, Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT), will create a companion volume to The Backyards of Heaven, which featured contemporary poetry of Ireland and Newfoundland. This anthology will span some 225 years providing a comprehensive cross-section of verse and poetry from Ireland and Newfoundland, emphasizing important thematic relationships in the work in both places.

8. "Resources in Traditional Music"
Dr. Colette Moloney, WIT, intends to develop curriculum materials in traditional music and song that could be used in schools in both Ireland and Newfoundland. The project will catalogue, edit and copy the materials collected from recordings from more than 100 traditional musicians in the Waterford area, onto CDs so that it may be made available at the WIT library and at Memorial University.

9. "Battered Cod"
Ms. Libby Seaward, Waterford Youth Drama, in conjunction with WIT, intends to create a docu-artistic video collaboration that will examine a threatened industry, the fishing industry of Newfoundland and Ireland. Through the mediums of dance and movement, poetry and music, fisherman�s story telling, archive footage and location filming, one young fisherman�s optimistic story � is set against a tide of decline.

10. "Memorials to the Fallen"
Dr. Brian McKenzie and Ms. Alice McDermott, WIT, will do an analysis using photographic and newspaper and other archives, of the contribution of the people of Waterford City and St. John�s, Newfoundland to the Great War 1914-1918, with a view to preparing an exhibition and publication of materials.

11. "Identification of Irish Music Material in the Folklore and Language Archive of Memorial University"
Mr. Nicholas Carolan, Irish Traditional Music Archives, will identify and list material (sound recordings, manuscripts, photographs, etc.) held at the Folklore and Language Archive of Memorial University which is of Irish-Newfoundland origin and which are therefore part of the story of Irish Traditional Music.

12. "Barabbas�Newfoundland"
The project involves a research, study and exchange visit made by Barabbas�the company to St. John�s. The visit will lead to collaboration between Barabbas and four or more interested Newfoundland institutions, resulting in a play based on the importance of belonging and a sense of place.

13. "First Impressions"
The Garter Lane Arts Centre will facilitate a joint exhibition in Waterford and Newfoundland based on the success of First Impressions of Newfoundland, a photographic exhibition by Anne Harpur and Margaret O�Brien Moran, and a new exhibition entitled First Impressions of Ireland by Sheilagh O�Leary. This new exhibition will be presented at Garter Lane Arts Centre with First Impressions of Newfoundland, and both exhibitions will return to Newfoundland to be presented by the City of St. John�s.

14. "Ireland to Newfoundland � the Nature of Experience"
Julia Sigwart and Nigel Monaghan, National Museum of Ireland, Division of Natural History, will create a youth-focussed exhibit to inspire love for the natural world and the human experience of fauna shared across the North Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland.

15. "Community Youth Advisory Board Network"
The Partnerships Network (PLANET) proposes to establish a Community Youth Advisory Board Network (CYABN) following its study of models of best practice in Newfoundland. The objective of the proposal will be to establish a CYABN comprised of young people who would be supported to develop programmes and make recommendations for the allocation of youth related partnership funding.

16. "Youth Film Project"
Mr. Ollie Breslin, Waterford Youth Drama, will work with young people in Ireland and Newfoundland to create two short films, simultaneously, using the same script. Both films will be seen back-to-back as a means of seeing both cultures through their work.

17. "Building on the Past � Integrating Archaeological Research in Ireland and Newfoundland"
Dr. Gabriel Cooney, UCD, will develop a pilot project to examine the post-medieval archaeology of a small, selected area in South East Ireland with strong linkages to Newfoundland. Project to be called - A Hidden Past: The Archaeology of the Home Place.

18. "Medical Ethnography of a Travelling Doctor with the IGA"
Dr. Marie-Annick Desplanques, UCC, intends to provide an academic perspective on an original manuscript focusing on the experience of Miles Frankel, who practiced as a doctor for the International Grenfell Association, in Northern Newfoundland and the Southern Labrador Coast in the late sixties and early seventies.

19. "Feasibility study grant to investigate the viability of a permanent Sea Week twinning between Ireland and Newfoundland and Labrador"
Mr. Ray McGrath intends to undertake a feasibility study to investigate the viability of a permanent Sea Week Festival twinning between the Waterford/Wexford region of Ireland and Newfoundland and Labrador.

2003 08 01                                      9:20 a.m.