Cultural Development
The Cultural Affairs Officer (CAO) is the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure’s representative in Washington DC. The role of the CAO is to advocate and raise a positive profile of Northern Irish arts and culture in the U.S.
Key Objectives:
- Promote Northern Irish artists and performers in the US market
- Identify and develop opportunities for learning and development through international exchange
- Identify events where Northern Irish arts and cultural elements can be highlighted
- Identify and create partnerships that can deliver on the first three objectives
- Identify opportunities for promoting a non-stereotypical vision of Northern Ireland’s arts and culture.
Target artistic disciplines include:
- Theatre, dance and the performing arts
- Film and creative industries
- Visual and applied arts
- Literature
- Music, both composition and performance
Achievements include:
- Raised the profile of Northern Ireland at the Re-Imagining Ireland conference in Charlottesville, VA. 2003.
- Arranged significant Northern Irish contributions at the Mid Atlantic Regional meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies at the University of Maryland 2003 and Princeton University 2004 including pages from the Ulster Covenant displayed for the first time outside Ireland.
- Facilitated Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s first international actors’ residency in Washington DC.
- Arranged screenings of films by documentary maker John T. Davis, Princeton and Washington DC.
- Facilitated the NI Bureau becoming the first US site of the NI Film and Television Commission’s Digital Archive.
- Brokered and secured Northern Ireland’s participation in the Smithsonian Institution’s Folklife Festival in 2007