Digesting the small print

Anyone keen to get their hands on Succeeding Better, the report on Indecon/ Pricewaterhouse Cooper's review of The Arts Plan 1995-98, commissioned by the Minister and published last Friday, should log on to the National Library's Website at http:// www.heanet.ie/natlib/artsplan/ and it's also available in all public libraries.

Nobody could argue with the report's emphasis on the importance of enabling individual artists and organisations to realise their potential. Its insistence that the arts must be evaluated in terms of artistic objectives rather than narrow financial or wider economic impacts is also very constructive.

It is extremely clear about the outstanding problem areas, which most people working in the arts will recognise: the lack of development of international markets for Irish arts, which it recommends, should be a central objective of the next Arts Plan; the lack of progress in relation to the crucial issue of arts education and appreciation; the fragmented nature of the sector; the variance in quality and lack of interaction between arts organisations; the low incomes and lack of skills development; and lack of progress in improving access to the arts across socio-economic divides.

The need for the Arts Council to consult with the arts community in the implementation of the next Arts Plan is also stressed. Having gone through two parallel consultation processes last year - Indecon's and the Arts Council's - the arts sector is certainly getting plenty of practice at this. The new Arts Plan, now expected to appear before the summer, will include a consultative review, "showing what the sector is saying", according to the Arts Council's director, Patricia Quinn.

"We will have to change our style of consultation," she says, "so that it is a continuous process."

So far, so positive. But the Indecon report's recommendation that revenue funding for new arts organisations be "significantly restricted until existing organisations are adequately resourced" is worrying, especially since many small arts organisations would argue that funding allocation is already too selective. Patricia Quinn has said that this will not be accepted "wholesale", but the question remains as to how much leeway the Arts Council has. It has been requested by the Minister to "take into consideration" the Indecon report's conclusions in preparation of the new Arts Plan, just as it has to incorporate the Minister's particular priorities: the areas of disability and the Irish language. This could mean, as Martin Drury has recently expressed in an article in Youth Drama Ireland, the substitution of a "hand's length" government policy for the traditional "arm's length policy".