The first festival is the hardest

FESTIVALS are funny things. When they thrive, they tend to thrive on reputation, on golden memories of last year's party and shared hedonism. A successful festival thus becomes a self perpetuating feel good myth. So, like the famed first million, the first one is always going to be the hardest. This week's inaugural Sense Of Cork festival may not quite succeed in capturing the elusive public imagination and it might lack a certain amount of wallop, but it has at least managed to draw the city's artists out of their stubbornly reclusive cells.

Cork's creative community has long maintained a shoulder shrugging, manana attitude, to an extent that the place would feel languidly Mediterranean if it wasn't for the weather. It's done the heart good to see practitioners of all disciplines stagger from their spaces and garrets and lairs to do their bit for the common cause. The organisers deserve credit, too, for refusing to focus on a single form. In staging A Sense Of Cork as an umbrella event for all the arts, they've given it a solid foundation for the future. Putting on a festival like this in a place like Cork is akin to fighting a war on complacency and it's important to choose your weapons wisely. In compiling the broadest possible arsenal, the organisers have acted sagely.

It was a pity, in a way, that A Sense Of Cork, launched last Saturday with its most innovative event, the independently promoted Southern Soul And Disco Festival. A swaggering, slinky hipped procession around a selection of city centre pubs and the three levels of the Opera House, it was a loud and shouty testament to clubland's vital role in Cork's cultural makeover. It might have been the ideal way to round off the week's events. Still, it was fun while it lasted, with DJs from the four corners of the global dance floor treating enthusiastic punters to selections that occasionally took liberties with the soul and disco tag.

One of the better pub events was a freestyle hip hop session in An Spailpin Fanach, in which rappers from Cork, Dublin and Galway frantically swapped the mic, while DJs from Manchester's Grand Central Collective and elsewhere laid down the back beat. A couple of years back, this class of thing would have led to the raising of wry smiles amongst those of the belief that hip hop was best left to gentlemen from the scarier parts of L.A., but the homegrown variety is thriving and will continue to grow.

AT THE Opera House, nostalgia was the opium of the masses with performances from Jocelyn Brown - a slight disappointment - and Gwen Dickey, formerly the mightylunged chanteuse with 1970s act Rose Royce. Her rousing, karaoke style rendition of Love Don't Live Here Anymore, the definitive disco torch song, was a highlight to these admittedly sentimental ears.

On Sunday night, the Grand Central Collective were elevated to the main stage and were joined by one Lorna Harris, a former world kick boxing champion (!) who provided the vocals on Goldie's seminal 1994 track Inner City Life. Hot Chocolate headlined and their performance was brutal. Original singer Errol Brown has long since fled the camp, and has been replaced by an excitable chap in a canary yellow vest, who came to the band's attention when he appeared on ITV's Stars In Their Eyes, Nuff said.

Earlier on Sunday, there was a family orientated Picnic In The Park a brightly bedecked feast of clownish entertainment and face painting galore. It was followed by the optimistically monikered Samba 97 a showcase for Cork's emerging popsters. The sun failed to shine on the Grand Parade (it fell like a fine afternoon in February) but the subdued hues nicely matched the tones of many of the youngish hands. It was interesting to note the increasing dominance of sadcore, the Radiohead led wave of melancholia that has begun to flavour hit parades everywhere.

Monday's Bonfire Night celebrations were billed as the central focus of A Sense of Cork, but the open air event on Emmett Place never really ignited, despite the best efforts of Craic Na Coillte, the West Cork street theatre group, who might not have the resources of Macnas but who definitely have a similar creative spark. There was also a suitably spectacular fireworks display over the Lee. The strange thing about fireworks is that there's no suspense to the event, you know exactly how the visual narrative is going to unfold but every time they manage to bring an open jawed gape of childish wonder to the face. Thousands turned out for the midnight show, making this easily the most popular event of the week.

A Sense Of Cork now scurries indoors, with a concentration on theatre and the visual arts up to the weekend. The most sought after tickets so far have been for the Abbey's production of Michael Harding's Sour Grapes at the Everyman and for Boomerang Theatre Company's offering at The Granary, a first time production of The Burning Spirit by the late Sean Dunne. In the visual arts, there are exhibitions everywhere, in traditional and found spaces. The National Sculpture Factory's showcase, promisingly titled Making Sense, opens at the Cork RTC today and has been the subject of feverish advance word, while the New Generations exhibition at the Triskel gives the city's artistic youth its fling.

There's plenty left to enjoy over the weekend. The Victorian Street Fair on MacCurtain Street on Sunday for one thing, the Heineken Weekender (Olive, ABC, US3 et al) at the Opera House for another. There is also the San Jose Youth Orchestra on Saturday and David Marcus's lecture on Irish Writing on Sunday.

SO CAN the festival build on these promising beginning and go on to rival the likes of the Galway Arts Festival? Gerry Barnes, Opera House director and a member of the Sense Of Cork committee, reckons it can: "I'm very, very pleased with the way things are panning out. I think the atmosphere has been great, there have been some excellent events and we've got a strong base to work from. This is a slow building operation and it'll continue to develop over the coming years. By the time the millennium year comes around, I'm confident it'll be a really strong festival."

Cash, naturally, is a big consideration. Next year, there should be Arts Council support, which might allow for a more international line up. This would add a touch of glam to the necessary bedrock of local talent. And what about a name change? A Sense Of Cork is a somewhat ponderous title, with a wispy, impalpable feel. Why not call it the Cork Arts Festival and be done with it?