field:arts x Dublin Fringe Festival 2025
Dublin Fringe Festival and field:arts are delighted to now be in the third year of a successful partnership supporting emerging Creative Producers. It's an exciting time to cultivate growth, sustainability and ambition across the independent contemporary arts sector in Ireland. This support has been created to embolden and prioritise the relationship between Creative Producers and Artists on their journey to create new work.
Nominated by Dublin Fringe Festival and selected by field:arts these supports have a particular focus on emerging Creative Producers who are establishing their practice. Participating producers are all working on projects in Dublin Fringe Festival 2025. The artists and shows that make up this year’s field:arts x FRINGE LAB 2025 cohort are: Maiya McQueen - +353 with Kevin Keogh’s +353 Presents: The Revenger’s Tragedy Sinéad Gallager - Maisie Lee’s The Shape of Quiet Feelings, Isolde Fenton’s IN A BAD WAY, and bluehouse theatre’s Glass Places.
Alongside a financial contribution to pay Creative Producers for their time, supports offered by field:arts to selected producers during this timeframe include: training and mentorship, producing support and production advice, professional guidance, an introduction to a wider network, audience development, and more generally artistic growth and artform development.
"It is so important for the sector to be encouraging emerging producers. field:arts are a vital resource to emerging Creative Producers who are making work across artform and genre – in 2025, this is showcased through the variety of shows represented by the work being produced by Maiya and Sinéad – theatre featuring a full orchestra, work for young audiences, a demi-opera, and a one-woman play. We are delighted to be continuing this partnership to help shape these careers. We look forward to seeing the continued and long-term impact of this initiative when these shows have their world premiere at Dublin Fringe Festival 2025.”
Bee Sparks, Festival Director, Dublin Fringe Festival
“There’s something powerful about creating space for those shaping what’s next. Our ongoing collaboration with Fringe Lab to grow this initiative is about backing the next wave of Creative Producers breaking new ground at Dublin Fringe Festival 2025. It’s an investment in process over product - resourcing the work as it evolves, rather than just spotlighting the outcome. This year the named creative producers, artists, and collectives are breaking new ground to deliver urgent, genre-defying work to Irish audiences. At field:arts, we’re committed to offering meaningful support through direct financial investment, tailored mentorship, and by providing access to essential resources and tools. Our aim is to create the conditions where Creative Producers are equipped, connected and supported to do their best work while also having the opportunity to build a sustainable future for their own career path and for the artists they represent”
Lynnette Moran, Director, field:arts
The Producers and Artists previously supported by this scheme are listed below: 2024 - Mary Kilduff of Holly Furey & Ursula McGinn’s SUCKIN DIESEL and Lucy Holmes of FILTH!’s THIS TOO SHALL PASS. 2023 - Osaro Azams, creator of Fried Plantains Collective’s Black Jam, Gina Donnelly, Producer of Colm McCready & SkelpieLimmer’s Scaredy Fat and Ois O’Donoghue, creator of Jaxbanded Theatre’s Hyper.
ABOUT MAIYA MCQUEEN
Maiya McQueen (she/they) is an anthropologist and emerging creative producer working across academic and arts spaces. Her experience in qualitative research and archival work, project management, and arts administration have inspired a unique, collaborative approach to the work she does in academic/arts spaces. Maiya is the creative producer for +353, a collective of individually working artists, facilitators and academics, who collaborate on a non-exclusive basis to create work that genre-bends, redefines and engages community in an authentic and meaningful way. Currently, she is producing “+353 Presents: The Revenger’s Tragedy” in collaboration with lead artist and director, Kevin Keogh.
Kevin and Maiya work together to handle all things production for +353, supporting and collaborating with one another, and likeminded artists in creating, developing, and presenting bold and innovative work across theatre, music, fashion, and visual art spaces. Maiya holds Bachelor's degrees in psychology and anthropology from San Francisco State University, where she went on to manage research in psychology of the law. Following her time at SFSU, Maiya worked as a research assistant at Harvard’s Hip-hop Archive and Research Institute. She also holds a Master's degree from The London School of Economics and Political Science. Her Master’s Research Hip-hop Theatre: Exclusion, Influence, and Embodiment, utilized collaborative ethnographic research conducted by herself and Kevin Keogh to explore the intersections of Hip-hop and theatre in the Irish arts scene. Maiya’s anecdotal research in the anthropological spaces has primarily focused on Blackness, hip-hop, theatre, and the intersections of the three, as well as Queer identity and kinship.
In the realm of equity, diversity, and inclusion, Maiya currently works as an anecdotal research consultant for Griffin & Strong, PC. where she supports data collection and drafts anecdotal evidence chapters and findings reports for economic disparity studies commissioned by local governments across the United States.
ABOUT SINÉAD GALLAGHER
Sinéad Gallagher is a multidisciplinary creative producer based in Cork. She holds an MA in Arts Management and Creative Producing from UCC and has worked as an assistant producer with Once Off Productions and as an independent freelancer. Recent producing credits include the Cork Fringe double bill at The Everyman, SHOW: A Showcase of Works in Progress at Cork Theatre Collective, The Jesus Trilogy at Dublin Theatre Festival (Once Off) and The Dead Letter Office National Tour (Once Off).
ABOUT FIELD:ARTS
field:arts was created in response to a new pilot initiative from the Arts Council for creative production supports in Ireland. It is a support agency dedicated to elevating creative practitioners across the independent contemporary arts sector in Ireland. field:arts recognises the alchemy of process, ideas, partnership and collaboration required to realise ambitious projects of excellence and of artistic value. field:arts has committed financial support and investment in key resources to enable practitioners across the independent arts sector to work continuously with security and consistency. By providing a bedrock of support we hope to afford our cohort the time to commit to their work between projects and to build a sustainable year-round practice, while positively impacting the portfolio of artists that they collaborate with. field:arts responds to the needs of Producers and Artists by offering extensive year round administrative, producing and production management support, as well as opportunities for development and residency space alongside additional financial support.
Together we work to enable Producers to leverage additional support across the wider cultural sector by cultivating diverse approaches to fundraising, partnerships, co-commissioning and co-production models – enabling practitioners to diversify short-, medium- and long-term goals & objectives. The belief is that field:arts as a model of support will allow for better living and working conditions for all involved, and subsequently a higher quality of artistic growth and ultimately greater experiences for Irish audiences.