The Arts Council Podcast

Section 2 of the 'Artists with Disabilities at the intersection of Work and Welfare' Report: Background, Rationale and Methodology.

VO Artist: Dorothy Grace Laity

Introduction to the 'Artists with Disabilities at the Intersection of Work and Welfare' report 2025.

VO Artist: Dorothy Grace Laity

Patricia Forde, Laureate na nÓg 2023 - 2026, delivered her inaugural laureate lecture at Baboró 2024, inspired by the theme she has chosen for her laureate, “Making It Up As We Go Along”. Patricia discussed the importance of reading in a child’s creative development and the importance of immersive play in fostering the skills required to read and write creatively.

The December Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Elaine Feeney about his book 'How to Build a Boat'.

“Elaine Feeney’s second novel, set in a small, fictional Irish town on the west coast, tells the story of Jamie, a boy who seeks to connect with his dead mother. ‘Feeney’s prose,’ The New York Times has written, ‘is both careful and relaxed — detailed in its description of place and character and of the effortful human urge to find order in the natural world.’” — Colm Tóibín

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/uploadedFiles/wwwartscouncilie/Content/Arts_in_Ireland/Literature/Laureate_for_Irish_Fiction/Art%20of%20Reading%20Book%20Club%202024.pdf

The November Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Michael Magee about his book 'Close to Home'.

“Michael Magee’s first novel deals with the Troubles as both legacy and aftermath. At its centre is Sean who has returned to Belfast. The book has been described by The Guardian as ‘a staggeringly humane and tender evocation of class, violence and the challenge of belonging in a world that seems designed to keep you watching from the sidelines.’”

— Colm Tóibín

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The October Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Caoilinn Hughes about her novel ‘The Alternatives’.

“Caoilinn Hughes’s novel deals with the lives of four brilliant sisters, lives that have been deeply scarred by the death of their parents. As Hernan Diaz has written, this is ‘a tale about sisterhood, a novel of ideas, a chronicle of our collective follies, a requiem for our agonizing species… in a prose full of gorgeous surprises…glows with intelligence, compassion, and beauty.’” — Colm Tóibín

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

“Paul Lynch’s novel, winner of the 2023 Booker Prize, is set in the near future in a real Dublin in which a totalitarian regime has come to power. ‘If there was ever a crucial book for our current times,’ The Guardian has written, ‘it’s Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song.’”

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The August Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Dermot Bolger about his novel 'The Lonely Sea and Sky'

“The novel tells the story of the rescue by a small Irish boat of 168

German sailors during World War II. The narrator is Jack Roche, a

14-year-old Wexford lad whose father has been killed at sea. Part

historical fiction, part coming-ofage narrative, this is a perceptive

and exciting novel about life at sea as a way of dramatizing human

relations at their most intense.” — Colm Tóibín

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

“Set in 1994, The Coast Road tells the story of two women— Izzy and Colette. Colette has left her husband and sons for a married man in Dublin. When she returns to her home in County Donegal, her husband, Shaun, a successful businessman, denies her access to her children. ‘The last great book I read,’ the actress Gillian Anderson has said. ‘It will no doubt be a bestseller.'"

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The June Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Belind McKeon about her novel 'Solace'

"In her compelling debut novel, Solace,’ Anna Fogarty wrote in The Irish Times in 2011, ‘Belinda McKeon succeeds in subtly reconfiguring and updating the archetypal story of a son’s quarrel with his father. In her hands, it becomes a profound and exacting conjuration with the pyscho-social shifts taking place in contemporary Ireland.”

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/