Emilie Fitzgibbon to be honoured with Lord Mayor's Culture Award

Emilie Fitzgibbon has been chosen by the Lord Mayor of Cork city as the recipient of the 2023 Culture Award for her lifetime dedication to arts in education and youth theatre.

The Midleton woman studied English and Music in University College Cork (UCC), where she later became a senior tutor in the English department.

Having directed for the Cork Theatre Company in the 1970s, Ms Fitzgibbon was invited to take over their developing theatre-in-education programme.

This role grew into an independent professional company, Graffiti, set up in 1984. Graffiti is still going strong and is due to celebrate its 40th year next year.

As artistic director of Graffiti, Ms Fitzgibbon built an amazing team of collaborators, commissioned and devised new work, and extended the range and scope of the company, way beyond the traditional boundaries.

Graffiti formed an attached youth theatre wing, called ACTIVATE, to help the personal and creative development of young people.

ACTIVATE moved into collaborative work with leading institutions in the fields of educational and youth theatre, and fostered a range of in-class drama workshop programmes for young people, and continued its mission of producing serious, top-class professional theatre for young audiences.

Ms Fitzgibbon played a leading role in establishing the National Association for Youth Drama and, more recently, was one of the first in the country to realise the role of the arts in feeding the emotional, social and intellectual capacities of very young children.

She pursued this work through her own productions, advocacy, and through the work of the BEAG project.

Overall, Ms Fitzgibbon has acted as a major influence in the world of arts through her company’s work, her lectures, publications and her tireless advocacy. 

A number of years ago, her contribution to this area was acknowledged internationally when she was given a lifetime achievement award by ASSITEJ, a global body in professional arts for young people.