Wexford Festival Opera, winner of the Judges’ Special Recognition Award supported by Accenture, has always worked very collaboratively with each of its sponsors. Maintaining a broad range of partners allows the festival to work and learn from very experienced sponsorship and marketing professionals, which ultimately adds to its offering for audiences and artists.

‘Looking for the positives that came from the last two years, the sudden crisis we were all plunged into actually brought us closer to our partners and in many cases forced us to refresh and rethink elements of our partnerships. After pivoting to an online Festival in 2020, it gave us some extra time to review each partnership and build on elements of each,’ says Adeline Minchin, Sponsorship Manager at Wexford Festival Opera.

Wexford Festival Opera works closely with each of its partners to ensure that the partnership is fulfilling their company sponsorship objectives, matching sponsors with events and projects which best speak to the values of their company. This includes the Danone Young Outstanding Female Artist Award launched last year, Datapac’s support of a new community outreach programme Synapses, Arachas’ support of a new Pop-Up Trail which helps the Festival programme over 30 free events across Wexford Town throughout the 17-day Festival and PwC’s partnering on the newly launched Wexford Factory, an academy for young Irish and Irish-based artists launching careers in opera.

Etain Seymour, Marketing and Communications Director at Accenture in Ireland says, ‘We were delighted to award the Judges’ Special Recognition Award to Wexford Festival Opera for its deep creative partnerships with the corporate sector to reach its audience in new ways through the pandemic. Wexford Festival Opera demonstrated the positive impact of a diverse set of partnerships, as well as agility in its approach, evolving it to one of the world’s leading opera festivals that treasures forgotten masterpieces and brings a global audience of opera-lovers to Wexford.’