€38,000 in funding - along with senior level mentoring from the experts - is on offer for the Irish winner of the Sky Academy Arts Scholarship, for which the shortlist has been unveiled.
Six Irish artists, from backgrounds including dance, visual arts and performing arts are in the running for the prize, the winner of which will be announced at the South Bank Awards in London on June 7.
Having whittled down the applicants, the six remaining in the chase are:
Jessica Patterson with The Boy and the Chimney, a short animation set around the Poolbeg power station
Kevin Gaffney Tectonic Plates of Conversion, a new body of work at the Linenhall Arts Centre exploring areas of forgotten Irish industries
Ruairi Donovan with Soldiers, dance piece for 100 male-identified performers, examining masculinity and commemoration in the context of the 1916 Centenary
Aoife McAtamney with LAZARUS LIVES!, a live, contemporary dance performance produced by Ellie Creighton, hosted by Tiger Dublin Fringe 2016
Liv O’Donoghue with STATE, a part intricate, physical dance theatre, part performance art installation exploring the psychology of creation and performance
Dan Colley with The Collapsing Horse Ensemble, seeing a team of dancers and actors spending one day a week for 12 weeks creating and performing a live sitcom, with the rest of the time spent training and developing a contemporary dance-theatre production of The Nutcracker.
The judges also highly commended a further four applicants: Georgia Corcoran, Rachel Donnelly, Tom Lane and Maeve Stone.