Design and Crafts Council of Ireland awards encourage strong craft and manufacturing base

BASED in Kilkenny and doing stalwart work for Irish design, the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland (DCCOI), announced its Future Makers Awards and Supports Programme 2016 at a ceremony in Dublin last Wednesday.

This series of 30 bursaries for designer-makers is a concrete way of encouraging a strong craft and manufacturing base in this country while also supporting emerging talent. The work of furniture maker, Simon Doyle, (who featured in the Irish Examiner’s ‘Home’ magazine) won the Future Maker of the Year Award of €5,000 — which he shares with fashion designer Edel Traynor.

The Innovation Award of €2,000 was presented to ceramic artist Zsiri Melinda Dempsey who is originally from Hungary but is now based in Co Clare. Visual Communications graduate, James Delaney, from Dublin, received the Imagined Futures Award of €1,000, a new category introduced for 2016.

In the student category, Jack Roche from Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, who is studying fashion at LSAD, received the overall Future Makers Student of the Year Award of €2,000 for his collection and the Innovation Award of €1,000 was presented to Maureen Laverty from Toomebridge, Co Antrim, who is studying Product Design Engineering (PDE) at the Glasgow School of Art.

Annemarie Reinhold, who is studying jewellery at NCAD was one of three students who received residency support of €1,000 and the Fixperts Creative Award of €500 was awarded to five NCAD students — Sarah Madden (visual communication), Alana McDonough (visual communication), Laura Lowry (visual communications), Nathan Joyce (product design), and Maverick Andaloc (product design) — for their collaborative project entitled ‘IndePEN — a pen holder for Donal’. Check out www.futuremakers.ie.