'The arts need leadership now more than ever'

ORLAITH MCBRIDE was appointed director of the Arts Council in June, and took up her position at Merrion Square in September. She has a long background in youth and community arts. She grew up in Donegal, where her interest in community arts in particular, and the arts in general, started with the amateur dramatic groups that performed all over Donegal at a time when few professional theatre companies toured the regions.

Speaking of Donegal now, she says: “My soul, my heart, and every fibre of my being is from south-west Donegal, but I was schooled in Ballybofey,” which she describes briskly as “a place of little character”.

McBride’s previous roles include those of director of the National Association for Youth Drama, and arts officer with the National Youth Council of Ireland, an organisation of which she is now president. She was also a board member of the Arts Council from 2003.

Being appointed to an organisation with which you’ve already had a seven-year relationship carries its own challenges. You already have an understanding of how the organisation works, which can be helpful.

There is however, also the possibility of lacking the fresh eye of someone appointed from outside.

“I don’t see it as a disadvantage,” is McBride’s view. “It has allowed me hit the ground running. And in many ways, because I understand how the organisation works, it allowed me to get stuck into the estimates right away.”

Sometime next Monday, in the first instalment of the new two-day Budget, the Arts Council will find out what sum it has been allocated for 2012. Last year, the council received €65.2 million in State funding.

Since 2008, the amount has decreased every year, and it seems inevitable, in common with cutbacks in every other State body, that there will be further cuts to the council’s budget announced on Monday.

What does McBride think the region of those cuts will be?

“I’m preparing to maintain the level of funding we already have,” she insists, while simultaneously acknowledging this is highly unlikely to be the case.

Since her appointment, McBride says she has been lobbying hard to promote the arts within Government.

“It’s really important, for instance, that the Arts Council articulate how the arts should be implemented at local level.”

She speaks of “targeted advocacy”.

It becomes clear over the course of the interview that funding in the forthcoming Budget has been McBride’s all-consuming concern during the short period of her appointment thus far.

“Funding has been my priority ever since I came into the job,” she admits.

The closing date for arts organisations to apply for funding for 2012 has passed. The council received 325 applications this year.

Even given that in any year not all will pass the criteria for funding, there are still, McBride estimates, “three times more applications than available funding”.

Once the figures are announced on Monday, council staff will start assessing applications and make their funding decisions by March.

So what does the Arts Council look for in a funding application?

“Quality of the work. Artistic ambition. That it can demonstrate risk-taking. Value for money. And that for an organisation, that it functions well as an organisation,” she says.

“We don’t make art in here, and neither do we know what it is like to make art, so it’s really important that we listen to the people who do.

“We’re out and about, and I get out and about as much as I can. I do listen to people.”

Having said this, McBride is careful to qualify it by pointing out that during this listening process, when she may also be lobbied by individuals or representatives from organisations when she is out and about, it will make absolutely no difference to how their funding application will be looked at.

Virtually everyone who works in arts administration complains about the complex bureaucratic process involved in applying for funding from the council. McBride acknowledges this.

“This is the first time in 15 years I didn’t have to make an application to the Arts Council,” she says with relief, openly admitting that “people do speak of it as a head wreck. But the application process has gone online now. That has eased the process now, and hopefully it will improve still further.”

As a State body, the council is not only accountable to the public for the way it spends public money, but also to the community of artists and organisations it serves.

Historically, there have been poor lines of communication and engagement between the council and the wider community of artists, although it can be assumed both parties would welcome ways to make that communication better.

Social media seems an obvious tool. “Hands up on social media, we have not grasped that nettle yet,” McBride admits. “Well, there is a website. And a Twitter account.”

However, when asked the name of the account, McBride doesn’t know. “I have no idea,” she says. (The name is @ArtsCouncilHelp.)

“I’m looking at nothing until after the estimates,” she says, and repeats again, “funding has been my only priority ever since I came into the job.”

Any crisis, including a recession and the associated sharp drop in available monetary resources, presents a challenge to the way things were previously done within an organisation. Aside from cutting their own operating costs by 36 per cent at Merrion Square, where 51 people work, and preparing to have less money with which to fund projects, individuals, festivals and organisations, have the council been thinking of non-traditional methods that do not involve money about how to promote the arts?

McBride’s answer is delivered in the kind of language that sounds impressive but is vague. “We need to future-proof the arts in Ireland. We need to support a sustainable infrastructure for the future.” Then she starts talking about funding again.

The directorship of the Arts Council is a civil service position, and thus it is difficult for those who hold it to publicly express personal opinions, including on the organisation they run.

The arts are neither static nor dull, but in recent years, the level of discourse about the arts from the Arts Council has not been robust.

“That’s probably been the style,” acknowledges McBride. “I think the previous director was not as public-facing, but I think now is the time for the Arts Council to be leading on discourse. I’d be very keen for the discourse on the arts to be front-led by the Arts Council. The arts need leadership now more than ever.”

McBride does not offer any opinions on the arts, or the council, even off the record. The most she will offer, on the subject of the Abbey Theatre and the decade-long discussion that went on about its possible relocation, is that, “Maybe the best people to ask would have been the Abbey themselves.”

Then she says, very cautiously, “The Irish National Opera has not been the most effective organisation. Well, it has been a disaster, really.”

Formed in 2009, the INO closed earlier this year without staging a single performance. Nobody could dispute her comment.

McBride does say, however, Aosdána “could and should work with the Arts Council more closely. It should become more relevant outside its own community.”

She has not yet met Aosdána officially, but a meeting is scheduled shortly.

At the end of the interview, when I ask if there is anything else she’d like to add, or to stress anything we’ve already talked about that she feels is particularly important, McBride considers, and then replies decisively, “I love the Arts Council. I think it’s a really good organisation.”