Guinness Projects to back Sports Ideas

Guinness has launched a major initiative which will see the investment of €3 million into people and projects in four key areas of sport, art, music and food over the next three years.
The Arthur Guinness Projects will accept online applications from any project that may need an additional boost of funding and profile to bring it to life or expand its beneficial role within its community in Ireland.
All the projects will be voted on by the general public and four panels of judges will determine four winners from among those who secure the top 10% in each sector from the vote. In addition they will be free to choose one wild card entry so that 20 projects in total will receive the funding.
The judges will also provide advice and mentoring to the projects that are chosen.
The panel of judges in the sports category will be chaired by Donegal GAA Manager, Jim McGuinness. He will be backed by TodayFM and TV3 presenter Matt Cooper, Sarah O’Connor, CEO of the Federation of Irish Sports and Rob Hartnett, founder and CEO of Sport for Business.
“This is a great initiative which will give hope and backing to people that have the passion, the energy and the creative spark to make a real difference to Ireland but who may just need the support that we can provide through knowledge, experience, profile and investment,” said McGuinness at yesterday’s launch.
“It is a mark of the importance of sport within Ireland that it is such a key part of this exciting project,” added Rob Hartnett. “We will see and support the best and the brightest ideas from across the spectrum of the sports business sector. We will help them to fly with the support that the Arthur Guinness Projects will provide.”
Celebrity chef Dylan McGrath heads the panel looking at Food. Actor Chris O’Dowd, who played U21 football for Roscommon in his younger days will chair the Arts panel and the Script, who performed an acoustic set in the Guinness Storehouse yesterday as part of the launch, will head up the Music panel.
Lead singer Danny O’Donoghue, who is one of the highest profile entertainers in Britain at present through his role as the winning judge on The UK Voice, also revealed his own sporting background while kicking a ball around outside the Storehouse yesterday and confessed to having been a footballer and hurler before music brought him onto a global stage.
“Ireland is a place where there is an abundance of character, talent and creativity,” said Guinness Marketing Director Stephen O’Kelly. “Arthur Guinness was a true visionary, one of the original innovators and who, along with generations of his family have been behind some of the most important philanthropic gestures we have seen in Ireland.”
“Arthur Guinness Projects is all about championing the wealth of creative potential we have in Ireland. Our aim is to help people unlock their dreams and ideas and set them alight.”
Applications can be made online from today until August 9th through www.arthurguinnessprojects.com. Public voting will take place through to August 23rd after which the top 10% will be whittled down to four projects and one wild card. The winners will be announced during the build up to Arthur’s Day on September 26th.