Creative Ireland Spent Almost €1 Million on Advertising
According to its most recent financial accounts, Creative Ireland, the Government’s cultural and creativity programme, spent almost €1 million euro on newspaper, radio and social media advertising in 2017.
The body also spent over half a million euro on building its website.
Representatives of Creative Ireland were questioned on the spending last week at an Oireachtas committe meeting.
Under the heading of ‘Citizen Engagement Programme’, Creative Ireland spent €936,542 on print, radio and digital advertising, including €99k on a supplement in the Irish Independent, €74k on a calendar in the same newspaper, €171k on advertisements on local radio, and €106k on social media advertising. The company that managed the advertising received €86k.
The culture programme also spent €591,813 on the development of its website, including €174k for video production and €26k on ‘generating the ideas and creative for content’.
The website generated 130k visitors and Creative Ireland attracted 17k Facebook friends and 16k Twitter followers. A promotional video for the Hard Working Class Heroes festival received over 284k views. This video was among 21 created by CI that covered launches and events.
The spend on advertising and the website constituted 30% of the programme’s budget of €4.9m.
Advertising spend and creative projects
Responding to questions on the the programme’s spending, Director Tania Banotti said that expenditure on advertising had decreased this year, with purcashing of print advertising at an estimated €250k and spending on social media at €150k. Replying to questions about the programme’s focus, she said:
The Creative Ireland programme head office is not funding artists. We’re not a quango… we’re more like a lubricant in the sense that we’re bringing different Government departments to the table.
Creative Ireland was launched in 2016 with several aims, including making Ireland ‘the first country in the world to guarantee access for every child to tuition and participation in art, music, drama and coding’ and making ‘every local authority a dynamic hub of cultural creativity’.
The programme committed €2m to school and education focussed projects this year, including the Creative Schools project, which provides grants of €2k to schools and 9 artist days.
Creative Ireland provided €1m to local authorities last year to implement creative plans, which amounted to €32k for each authority. This funding has been doubled this year. It also recently announced €1.2m in funding for 30 new arts initiatives under its National Creativity Fund.
Creative Ireland has just received a 19% increase in funding for 2019, bringing its total to €7.15m.
See the 2017 accounts, opening statement and video below (meeting starts at 24:18).
For more, visit https://www.creativeireland.gov.ie/en
