THE ARTS Council has announced major grant allocations for 2015, with €206,682  granted for Kerry projects.

Kerry County Council was allocated a total of €26,110, while ‘Listowel Writers Week’ received €65,000 in funding.

Elsewhere in Kerry, the Cill Rialaig Project, an artists retreat in Ballinskelligs that provides self-contained live-in work spaces for artists received a grant of €60,845.

€29,770 will go to a collaborative touring project featuring traditional singer Pauline Scanlon and experimental traditional band Notify.

They will play at four different venues north and south of the border. Each performance will include two newly-composed Irish language songs presented in a contemporary way.

€17,957 went to  ‘Project 2.0 Light’ concerned with the subjugation of landscape by industry to realise two new sculptural commissions for exhibition in Ireland and the UK.

In the area of Irish literature, the ‘Feasta’ group will receive a €7,000 grant.

In 2015, for the first time in six years, the Arts Council’s own exchequer grant was maintained at 2014 levels (€56.668 million).

Amongst the larger grants offered were €1,420,00 to Wexford Festival Opera; €860,000 to The Gate theatre; €762,000 to Druid; €490,000 for Galway Arts Festival; €390,000 for Kilkenny Arts Festival; and €361,000 for the Royal Hibernian Academy. Separately, the Arts Council has committed €6.2 million to the Abbey Theatre for 2015, as part of a three-year funding agreement.