IS THE 2024 EMMA O'KANE BURSARY IN YOUR NAME?  APPLY NOW 

In March 2023, the inaugural Emma O’Kane Bursary was awarded to interdisciplinary artist, Maïa Nunes. In accepting the award they said - "In honour of Emma O’Kane and her artistic legacy of intuition and embodied wisdom, playfulness and curiosity, expansion and creativity. This bursary will support me as I endeavour to release my latent fears, internal restrictions and constrictions. Commit to a period of focused embodiment practice and movement research that will transform me and my practice so that I emerge with a firmly rooted and authentic movement vocabulary. Thus, empowering and emboldening me to move with more surety and fluency, ease and freedom in my future work." 

 

The Emma O’Kane Bursary is an award for independent artists who want to think beyond the boundaries of their art form and practice and to explore dance or a physical language in their work.  It honours the exceptional ethos and artistic practice of artist Emma O’Kane who died in 2021.

​

‘Go big or go home’ was an Emma expression. She would say it to encourage (and challenge) those she worked with to be ambitious and brave about what they wanted to achieve artistically. Emma believed in people’s potential and in trying things out. She was never afraid of failure. The purpose of the bursary, why it exists and its unique contribution to artists, aims to capture this essence. 

​

The bursary is open to professional artists of all types and talents. Whatever your background, lived experience or artistic practice, if you have the CURIOSITY to explore and integrate dance, movement or other forms of physical language in your work, the COURAGE to push art form boundaries and to challenge norms and the AMBITION to be the best that you can be as an artist, we would love to hear from you. 

​

Find out how to apply

​