We're THRILLED that Bookbag was awarded the Dublin Airport Authority €5000 Arts Award at the 2014 Allianz Business to Arts Awards last night!

'Bookbag', our book-gifting initiative in partnership with former Laureate na nÓg Niamh Sharkey and Children's Books Ireland is a project that provides books for school children from deprived, inner cities areas. Aimed at DEIS schools, where free books can be most needed, the Bookbag project gifts every child in chosen schools with a book to take home and keep.

We were delighted to launch the Bookbag project, in April of this year, in Rutland National School, the home of our first Oscar-Nominated Short Film, Give Up Yer Aul Sins! The team provided every student in the school with a Bookbag containing a book, posters, bookmarks and a letter from Niamh Sharkey as Laureate na nÓg. At the launch all students at Rutland Street School took part in a ‘monster doodle’ with Niamh and the animators from Brown Bag Films. 

Over two hundred books were gifted to the school library and every class in the school was subsequently visited by an author or illustrator.

Brown Bag Films has dedicated funding for another three years of the Bookbag project and the DAA €5K award will help Bookbag to continue with great ambitions for it to become a nationwide program!

The ANYA and To Russia With Love crew were also in force last night, to support our short film ANYA, which was nominated in the Best Creative Staff Engagement category.

ANYA director Damien O'Connor said:

“To have Anya selected as one of nine projects from 97 submissions was a huge honour and it was great to be in the company of such high profile companies as Google and Coca-Cola. The biggest honour of all is to be able to tell the children at the Hortolova orphanage that the President of Ireland is now aware of both them and the brilliant work To Russia With Love continue to do for abandoned and orphaned children in the Russian Federation. A huge thanks to all the crew across the world who made Anya possible and an even bigger thanks to all the staff and children in the Hortolova orphanage for welcoming us in and inspiring the film.”

We had a spectacular night for two projects we're extremely proud of and delighted to have them recognised in such a high profile arena!

Congratulations to all the other nominees and award winners!

Keep your eyes peeled for the Business to Arts supplement which will appear in this weeks Sunday Independent on 14 September 2014!