FIONA BREEN
Fiona is an emerging mature actor and theatre maker from the midlands, interested in creating and performing in projects that flex between contemporary devised theatre and scripted plays.
In 2020, she re-entered the performance world after a forced sabbatical due to state infected Hepatitis C. On completing her Drama degree, she intended to work as an actor and theatre maker but reluctantly readjusted. Denied an active career, she chose when health allowed, to engage with local voluntary community arts practices. In 1996, Fiona founded the Offaly Drama Project with the goal of creatively sharing local stories with a wide audience.
Her recent performance work includes a cameo role in You’re Needy by tasteinyourmouth (Dublin Fringe Festival 2023), Gull (Dublin Fringe Festival, 2022) and Root (Dublin Theatre Festival, 2021), which she devised alongside her daughter, Shanna May Breen. Fiona was a participant on the 10th PanPan Theatre Company International Mentorship with Susanne Kennedy 2023. In 2021 Fiona composed The Meadow, a site-specific soundscape in Birr Workhouse Graveyard, an Offaly Drama Project. Currently she is working on my brother, your sisters, a new solo performance about her missing brother, Peter.
“It is with joy that I receive and accept this award as a mature emerging artist which is a testament to the timeless nature of creativity. This award signifies a journey of discovery and growth that defies age stereotypes and inspires us to embrace new beginnings at any age. It’s a celebration of resilience, determination, and the endless possibilities of artistic expression, proving that creativity knows no bounds. Thank you.”
THERESA RYDER
Theresa is a writer and further education teacher with an M.A. in Classics from Maynooth University. She is a keen advocate for lifelong learning and has a particular interest in autism in the adult classroom. She is a recipient of the Molly Keane Creative Writing award. Recent literary contributions include: The 32: an Anthology of Irish Working Class Voices, The Same Page Anthology, The Honest Ulsterman, Antigone Journal, The Waxed Lemon, The Irish Times, and Eat the Storms podcast. Her play Ritual Dance was performed in Cork Arts Theatre in 2023. She was awarded a place on the 2022 National Mentoring Programme and 2024 Northern Soul Roadshow from the Irish Writers Centre. Theresa is currently editing a novel and writing a memoir about her years as assistant to the late author/artist J.P. Donleavy.
“After raising my family, I began to consider my own ambitions. Returning to education was my first mission and at age fifty, I gained a master’s degree. After the formality of academic work it was a pleasure to indulge in more creative endeavours and, motivated by an early award, I began to take my writing seriously. The Age & Opportunity Emerging Artist bursary not only gives vital financial support, it gives recognition to the unique perspective of artists who are early in their creative pursuits but later in their years. As such an artist, I am grateful to be a recipient of this worthy award at a pivotal stage of my writing career.
ANNETTE SMYTH
Annette is a Meath-based painter, working on ideas around Temporary and ‘Work in Progress’.
She paints what she is visually compelled to. These tend to be momentary and fleeting or obscured and hidden. Her paintings are a process of complex angles, distances and shapes. They aim to imply a hidden detail and complexity that will not be the finished product but rather the support system. She believes we are all works in progress in a complex system that is a work in progress… transient, obscure and unknowable.
Working in acrylic paint, her paintings are often ‘real’ looking and very often an exact copy of the photographic image from which she is working, seeking the truth of the image. The process of creating an image starts for her with the photograph and continues with the painting process. The image becomes elevated. Although the photographic image she takes is real, she is looking for a point where reality straddles abstraction, this is where the beauty lies.
“This is my first award as a professional artist, it has given me a confidence lift to keep painting. I am very grateful.”
Professional Development Award
This award aims to offer support for an artist to undertake professional development opportunities.
Past Award Recipients – 2023 Recipient: Maree Hensey , 2022 Recipient: Siobhan Piercy
DECLAN GORMAN
Monaghan native Declan Gorman is a Theatre Maker and Public Artist. He lives near Loughshinny on the Fingal coast, and much of his community-engaged artistic work is undertaken on an arc from North Dublin through Louth, Monaghan and into Cavan. He was Theatre Artist in Residence for County Monaghan in 2018-19, where he worked with children and adults of all ages exploring local identity and history, culminating in a huge street event in Castleblayney and also “Dr Jack”, a play for families, celebrating renowned photographer JJ Clarke. In 2021-22 he led “The Green Belt” a public art project which concluded with 120 local performers and volunteers creating original performances at 25 coastal and urban sites in the Rush and Lusk region. As well as his work in community, he has won national and international respect as a playwright, director and performer. A trio of solo performances based on the writings of James Joyce have taken him all around Ireland, to Britain, Russia (pre-Ukraine invasion), Norway, India, USA and most recently Canada. He is currently embarking upon a book about his work, “Notes from the Practice” with support from his long-standing colleague and mentor Prof Joe Salvatore of New York University.
“I am very honoured to receive the Age & Opportunity Professional Development Award for 2024. It comes at a moment of reflection and renewal, and gives me the incentive to slow down, take a little time away from the frantic and adventurous life of the constantly travelling freelance artist, to write and develop a set of resources and essays. I am pleased in this endeavour to acknowledge the encouragement of my dear friend and mentor Joe Salvatore of New York University. I am indebted to all the inspiring people I have met over the 40 years since I made my professional acting debut with Co-Motion Theatre Company in the mid-80s: the actors, directors, technicians and designers; children and young people in schools; people my own age and older in community arts groups across the North East; people with disabilities; the migrant communities; all the people who have welcomed me into villages and towns from Monaghan to Mumbai. My special thanks to Age & Opportunity for this recognition at the threshold of my next set of adventures. I also wish to mention Sharon, my life partner, who I met through the theatre and whose work of recent years caring for older people has been a source of inspiration.”
SHARON MURPHY
Sharon Murphy is visual artist whose practice is lens-based incorporating photography, installation and recently drawing. Her work investigates the boundaries between the seen / unseen, fictive / real, conscious / (sub)liminal.
Drawing on a background in theatre and informed by concepts in magic realism and psychoanalysis, recurring motifs in her work include: theatre curtains; carousels; circus tents, performative sites; embodied staged spaces. Her works address uncertainty, the uncanny, the ‘there / not there’, linked to an investigation, quintessential to both photography and performance of what it is the viewer is shown or is seeing.
Recent exhibitions include: Draíocht, National Gallery of Ireland; RHA; Golden Thread Gallery Belfast, Halftone, PhotoIreland, Loop Festival, Barcelona. Murphy is a co-founding member of Shell/Ter Artist Collective (S/TAC). Upcoming exhibitions: RHA annual open, Limerick City Gallery & GOMA Waterford (S/TAC). CCI, Paris (solo). Her work is held is in private + public collections.
Creative Ageing Writing Bursary
The bursary aims to afford time and space for an artist, arts worker or writer to reflect on their practice as it relates to the arts and ageing/creative ageing – the learnings, insights but also challenges they have faced as they have gotten older or as they have worked with older people. In the coming years, we hope to contribute to this growing body of knowledge of creative ageing in Ireland as we continue to offer this award.
Past Recipients – Read the 2023 essay by Laurence McKeown and the 2022 essay by Michelle Read
SYLVIA CULLEN
Sylvia Cullen grew up on a farm in West Waterford. A graduate of Trinity College, her plays include Crows Calling, Bedazzled and The Thaw which is published by New Island. Where Three Waters Meet, her collection of Wexford-inspired stories commissioned by Creative Ireland, is available as a podcast online. Outlasting is a new quartet of short stories commissioned by Begin Together and Waterford Arts Office, in conjunction with Le Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris. Ancient Connections, an E.U. funded arts project in Wales and Wexford, commissioned Sylvia to write four new short stories for podcast, entitled Smugglers & Summer Snowflakes. The first story, Needle Rock, has been translated into Welsh and Irish. Recent work includes a Decade of Centenaries bursary to write three new short stories set in Wexford; Tin Caddy, the first story, focuses on two characters in their eighties. Grangegorman Histories have just awarded her a bursary for a new trilogy of short stories, Flighty Creatures. Set in Dublin 7 during the eighteenth century, this work will feature women who dwelt in the Asylum, the Workhouse and the Prison. With a Literature Bursary from The Arts Council, Sylvia is currently writing her début novel with mentoring from Paul Lynch.
“I am delighted to have the opportunity to reflect on my fourteen years as Writer-Facilitator for the award-winning Arts Ability Creative Writing programme. Based in the training centre attached to St. Senan’s Psychiatric Hospital in Enniscorthy, I loved working with the participants – mostly older men and women from the countryside, towns and villages of Wexford. These people and this work had a life-changing impact on me as a writer.”
Age & Opportunity is pleased to announce the opening of applications for the 2025 Artist Awards. These awards are part of our ongoing commitment to supporting artists aged 50 and over in Ireland. They aim to recognise both emerging talent and the importance of continued professional development in later life.
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