Lucy Caldwell was the 2012 recipient of a Major Individual Artist Award granted by the Arts Council Northern Ireland.

As part of The Brussels Platform Lucy and author David Park took centre stage at the Office of the Northern Ireland Executive in Brussels to read extracts from their most recent novels The Light of Amsterdam (David Park) and The Meeting Point (Lucy Caldwell). The authors read their work in front of an international audience, including MEPs and the opinion-formers amongst EU representatives in Brussels.

The Brussels Platform is the result of collaboration between the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Executive Office in Brussels. Launched in September 2011 the programme runs until June 2012 and will represent musicians, writers, dancers, theatre practitioners and visual artists giving them the opportunity to showcase their talents at a series of ten monthly events at the prestigious headquarters of the NI Executive. Encouraged by the welcome they received at the Northern Ireland Executive Office, Lucy Caldwell said ‘It was a real privilege to be invited to Brussels and to read alongside David Park. The audience was very engaged and the conversations continued even after the event had ended. Culturally, Northern Ireland feels like a very exciting place at the moment, and I felt proud to be a representative of that.’