Award Winners 2025
The Awards has a total of 13 categories, including ten main categories and three financial awards/bursaries.
All of our awards recognise excellence in arts partnerships. Specifically, our awards seek nominations that highlight exceptional collaborations between a business or philanthropic partner and an arts partner (organisation, collective, or individual artist) that have taken place between January 2024 and April 2025.
This year’s winners represents a mix of new corporate entrants to arts sponsorship, as well as a strong show of continuing support from long-standing supporters of the arts in the business world.
Click into the individual categories below for the nominees!
The Major Arts Partnership Award recognises outstanding large partnerships between businesses and arts organisations/artists valued at €25k or over, cash or in-kind.
Winner 2025
- Xestra Asset Management & Dublin City Council Arts Office: Artane Artist Studios
Highly Commended 2025
- Ace Autobody & Royal Irish Academy of Music: RIAM Spotlight Awards
- Dublin Port Company & Temple Bar Gallery + Studios: Longest Way Round, Shortest Way Home
- Tanqueray 0.0% & Dublin International Film Festival
The Small Arts Partnership Award recognises exceptional partnerships between businesses and arts organisations/artists where the sponsorship is under €25k in value, cash or in-kind.
Winner 2025
- Clinch Wealth Management & ANU Productions, Landmark Productions, MoLI: The Dead
Highly Commended 2025
- Aeolus Engine Services & Sing Ireland
- Samaritans & Smashing Times: Acting for the Future
- Kildare Credit Union & Blueway Art Studio: A Little Book of Brigid
The Irish Times Long-Term Partnership Award recognises compelling partnerships that have been in existence for three years or more, and have evolved during that time to incorporate new audiences, new strands of programming or have developed new modes of participation. Innovative approaches to enhancing the partnership will make these applications stand out.
Winner 2025
- Henry J Lyons & Temple Bar Gallery + Studios: Dublin Art Book Fair
Highly Commended 2025
- University of Galway & Druid
- Clem Jacob Hire & Spraoi International Street Arts Festival
- HLB Ireland & Graphic Studio Dublin: Echoes of Home
The Irish Life Creativity in the Community Award recognises projects and programmes that work with community groups to address specific issues, encourage community participation, bring new perspectives to creativity and joy to those who engage with them. Winning projects will be socially responsible and connect to the social impact strategies of both partners.
Winner 2025
- British Irish Chamber of Commerce & Fishamble: Taigh Ty Teach
Highly Commended 2025
- WALK & Smashing Times
- Rethink Ireland in partnership with TikTok & Dublin International Film Festival: Irish Film Pioneers
The CBRE Creativity in the Workplace Award celebrates collaborative partnerships that pioneer innovative and mutually enriching initiatives, fostering creativity within the corporate environment or engaging employees in artistic endeavours. Winning projects showcase exemplary workplace commissions, dynamic arts programming tailored for staff, interactive engagement activities with artists and other innovative initiatives that inspire creativity and foster a vibrant work culture.
Winner 2025
- Spencer Lennox & Irish National Opera: INO Future Leaders Network
Highly Commended 2025
- Cork & Kerry County Councils & Sample-Studios: Make or Break
- Connected Hubs & Contemporary Irish Art Society
This new award recognises creative partnerships that address themes around the environment, climate crisis, and circular economy and inspire positive change within the communities they engage with. This award honours the power of arts and culture in shaping a greener future.
Winner 2025
- Environmental Protection Agency, the National Library of Ireland & Paula T Nolan: Photographer in Residence
Highly Commended 2025
- MaREI & Croí Glan: CHANGE
- Native Events & IMMA: Earth Rising
- Irish Rail & Mild, Laura McMahon: Tern the Tide
The Jim McNaughton/TileStyle Perpetual Award for Best Commissioning Practice, crafted by sculptor Jason Ellis, is awarded annually to a business or organisation that has shown excellence in their approach to commissioning an artist of any artform. Winners will have documented the commissioning process and worked extensively with the artist to deliver an engaging piece of work that tells an important story.
Winner 2025
- Drogheda Port Company & Emily McCormack: Brig Manley
Highly Commended 2025
- Sherkin North Shore & Open Ear Festival: Island Residency Programme
- Peugeot, Ruth Medjber & Photo Museum Ireland: Her, Allure
- Irish Life & The Meditative Creative: Our City, Our Future.
The Creative Access Award recognises partnerships that offer the opportunity for marginalised and underrepresented groups to participate in the arts. Whether through educational programs, equipment provisions, or specially designed initiatives, winning projects exemplify efforts to ensure inclusivity and accessibility in the arts, enriching the lives of diverse communities.
Winner 2025
- Saint John of God & Dr Sinead McCann, AlanJames Burns: Our Place
Highly Commended 2025
- Specsavers Limerick & University Concert Hall: Panto For All
- The Ireland Funds & Irish Chamber Orchestra
- Clancourt & The Ark: Ark Access
The Community Foundation Ireland Arts Philanthropy Award seeks to recognise an individual, corporate foundation, trust or other philanthropic organisation that has displayed an outstanding commitment to supporting the arts. Nominations can be made by either the arts partner in receipt of the philanthropic gift or by an external nominating partner that has permission to make the nomination from both partners.
Winner 2025
- Tomar Trust
Highly Commended 2025
- Bank of Ireland for Begin Together Arts Fund
- Ecclesiastical Insurance Ireland for Movement for Good
The winner of this category is selected from applications to the nine main categories; it cannot be applied for directly. All applications are considered, with the winner being either a business or an arts organisation that has a diverse portfolio of partnerships that address a range of strategic objectives or demonstrate excellence in working with private-sector supporters across a range of initiatives.
Winner 2025
- Cork International Film Festival with Murphy’s, Tomar Trust, Future Planet, Irish Examiner & The Arc Cinema Cork
Highly Commended 2025
- Cork Midsummer with Tomar Trust, Ecclesiastical Insurance & University College Cork
- RIAM & Ace Autobody, Clinch Wealth Management & Ecclesiastical Insurance
The Irish Times €5,000 Arts Award is awarded to an arts organisation that has shown excellence through a particularly compelling project.
This year, it was awarded to Fishamble, The New Play Company for ‘Who I Am and How I Am’. A project, celebrating ethnically diverse young voices in the D1 area over four months of workshops exploring themes of identity, racial equality, and community harmony
Previous winners in recent years include Sing Ireland, axis Ballymun, Dublin Dance Festival and That’s Life for Bounce Club Night, and Waterford Walls.
Our longest-running bursary, the Jim McNaughton/TileStyle €10,000 Artist’s Bursary, now in its 17th year, will award an emerging artist in any artform looking to expand their practice.
In 2025, it was awarded to Manar Al Shouha, a Syrian-born painter based in Dublin. She plans to develop her first solo exhibition in Ireland, exploring new mediums such as printmaking, and expanding her international presence.
Recent winners have included actress and writer Lauren Larkin, actor and writer Thommas Kane Byrne, Afghani photographer Barialai Khoshhal, flautist Miriam Kaczor, artist Catherine Creaney, actor and playwright Aisling O’Mara, and more.
Launched in 2022, the Accenture €10,000 Digital Innovation in Art Bursary seeks to recognise artists whose work delivers on the promise of technology and human ingenuity.
The 2025 winner was Amanda Ralph, for her work in the digital space. She is working on setting up a digital ‘field station’ on a derelict farm to analyse wildlife using sensors, cameras, and audio data before biodiversity restoration begins. The bursary supports her return to full-time practice, skill development, and the creation of new work for an upcoming exhibition at Luan Gallery.
Previous winners include 1iing Heaney, AlanJames Burns and Nadia J. Armstrong.
