David Francis Moore
David is a Programmer and Producer with nearly two decades of experience working within the arts sector as an artist, arts worker and educator. In May 2023 he will join Dublin Fringe Festival as Festival Director following a successful tenure as Programme Director and Executive Producer at Carlow Arts Festival. He is currently Chairperson of Theatre Forum Ireland and a Trustee of Theatre Royal, Waterford.
Whilst at Carlow Arts Festival David co-led on the development of the organisations most recent strategy and was instrumental in supporting the development of the festivals year-round programme to include a new artist support programme and a county wide community engagement, learning and participation programme, enabling the festival to broaden its reach and impact, diversify it audiences, increase funding and uniquely position itself with the wider arts ecology. He introduced new programming strands to the festival programme including the O’Hara’s Live & Local Stage enabling the organisation to develop new partnerships, increase corporate sponsorship, funding and provide a new platform for local artists to present work.
Prior to this David was Theatre Programme Manager at VISUAL Carlow. In his position as Programme Manager, David commissioned, co-commissioned and presented work by some of Irelands leading artists and companies. He was instrumental in developing the organisations artist support and development programme, supporting the development of artists and companies such as United Fall, Cian Kinsella, Feli Speaks, Equinox Theatre Company and Bombinate Theatre. This programme focused on long term and institutionally embedded modes of support that better served the long-term sustainability of artists and their practices. David produced ambitious community engagement and participatory programmes that sought to embed artists practice on local level, to promote the development of new audiences for both the organisation and the artist. David also led on VISUAL’s participation in the Arts & Humanities Entrepreneurship Hub Project, an EU funded project which was established to improve the entrepreneurial capacity of Arts & Humanities graduates through dedicated support and training. His book ‘Our Thriving Tribe; Exploring Entrepreneurship in the Arts’ launched in 2021 and features contributions from a variety of emerging and established Irish artists, practitioners and arts workers from across the sector.
David is the former Chairperson of the Strollers Network, Ireland’s largest consortium of Art Centres. During his time as chairperson, he led on the development of the network’s new strategic direction and creation of its current artist development programme, PROPEL.
He is a former lecturer of Drama and Performance Studies at Carlow College. He is the founder and former co-artistic director of the Collaborative Artists Collective. An artist led production company focusing on the development of cross disciplinary collaborative arts practice.
David holds a BA in Drama & Performance form TU Dublin, an MFA in Art in the Contemporary World from the National College of Art & Design and a Diploma in Creativity, Innovation & Leadership from UCD. He has also studied at Columbia College Chicago and Manchester School of Art (MMU).