Young Irish Film Makers

Mike Kelly is the Artistic Director of the Young Irish Film Makers. He has awards for acting and directing culminating in an All-Ireland Directors Award in 1976.

In 1979 he was appointed to a full time position as a youth worker with inner city young people in London. After working there for five years he began studies at Middlesex University where he was awarded a B.A. (Hons) degree in Theatre and Film Studies.

In 1988 he went to Sydney, Australia to work with a street children’s project in Bondi.

It was while running a youth outreach video project with Metro Television in Sydney that he developed the idea of a youth film production organisation.

In 1991 he returned to Kilkenny to set up the Young Irish Film Makers and in 1998 he produced their first feature UNDER THE HAWTHORN TREE for Channel 4 and RTE. Several members of Young Irish Film Makers set up Cartoon Saloon whose recent film The Secret of Kells was shown nationwide.

In 2001 he created Dreamstuff Youth Theatre which is staging its seventeenth production, The Playboy of the Western World, in the Watergate Theatre at the end of April 2009. Several members of Dreamstuff have formed the highly successful Devious Theatre Company in Kilkenny.

In 2002 he established the National Youth Film School and wrote their first feature film THE CHILDREN which won two awards in US film festivals. He wrote and directed their second feature STEALAWAY which won the Columbine Award at the Moondance Film Festival in Denver. He produced SUCKERS the 2008 feature film from the National Youth Film School.

Young Irish Film Makers is currently developing a outreach programme to establish youth film making in disadvantaged areas nationwide.

With Dreamstuff Youth Theatre he created a Shakespeare Festival SHAKESPEARE IN THE HOUSE staged in association with Rothe House every summer.

Mike is a member of the Arts Council working party for the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People in the Arts Sector. He is a member of Youth Arts Advisory Committee as well as the Digital Film Makers Advisory Committee of the National Youth Council of Ireland.

He was awarded The 2008 Kilkenny Person of the Year Award for his contribution to the Arts in Kilkenny.

In November 2009 he was conferred with an honorary MA by the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, for his work with young film makers.

He holds a post graduate Higher Diploma in Theological Studies from St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

He is a board member of St. Canice’s Community Action, a family resource Centre based in the Butts area of Kilkenny city.