ArtScape/Deirdre Falvey: Speculation abounds about the possibility of Arts Council cuts after the Budget - figures of up to 20 per cent are being bandied about, as are various projections about the way cuts might be made (a percentage cut across the board, perhaps, or the singling out of particular organisations or projects).
In the meantime, though, the successful Critical Voices programme, which the Arts Council introduced last year, returns in 2003, with Iseult Dunne again as project manager, and Brian Hand taking over from Fiach MacConghail as curator. The biennial programme was introduced to bring international writers and thinkers about the arts and culture into contact with the Irish public, and the 2001 programme involved an eclectic and stimulating mix of events.
Brian Hand, a visual artist, writer and teacher - he was previously commissioned by the Arts Council and Science Council to explore the relationship between arts and science from an artist's perspective - says he wants to continue the contribution of the programme to Irish cultural life by introducing more voices to the critical debate, and with this in mind, he and Dunne have invited suggestions for visitors, events or audiences. There's no overriding theme to next year's programme, but Hand says he's starting the ball rolling with a question - what does globalisation mean to the creative practitioner?
"The role of the arts and their encounter and engagement with globalisation and its media discourses offers, I hope, a dynamic point of departure for debate and reflection in our current situation. It is a question I believe will interest wide and varied audiences here and abroad," says Hand.
Anyone interested in participating in the 2003 programme can write to: Critical Voices, The Arts Council, 70 Merrion Square, Dublin 2 (tel: 01-6180201/ 087- 9198389; e-mail: iseult@artscouncil.ie).
Carmody to integrate Stratford
Arts consultant Una Carmody is on the move - across the water to the heart of Shakespeare country. In her new job as partnership director - on a two-year contract - she'll be employed jointly by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to help both organisations to work together. Joint initiatives could be in the property, retail or marketing areas, says Carmody, but the aim is to make Stratford a more integrated cultural destination.
Carmody is excited about the prospect: "It's very rare to find something that combines all my experience - culture and property and the arts. It's also area-based, as Temple Bar was." Formerly Temple Bar's cultural manager, Carmody also produced last year's Tom Murphy season at the Abbey as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival.
Stanley Wells, vice-chair of the RSC and president of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, said this week: "Una Carmody has a great track record in business and the arts as well as considerable personal dynamism and intellectual acuity. All this makes her the ideal person to work with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre to enhance Stratford's international reputation as a centre for cultural tourism."
So, Una, the job is to make the RSC sexy? "I couldn't possibly comment on that!"
Great George's Street, Malaga?
Malaga's town council this month unanimously approved a proposal to name a street or square after Irish artist George Campbell (1917-79), thus strengthening the ongoing cultural links between Ireland and the Costa del Sol, Malaga and Andalucia, according to Dublin's former Spanish Cultural Institute director, Antonia Serra. The region was immortalised by Campbell, who spent six months in the Pedregalejo area of Malaga in each of the last 25 years of his life.
Provoking good box office
The controversy in Italy over Peter Mullan's award-winning film, The Magdalene Sisters, appears to have done the film no harm at the Italian box office, writes Hugh Linehan.
Mullan's film, set in a Magdalene laundry for "fallen" women in 1960s Ireland, has been criticised far more vigorously in Italy than in Ireland, where it opened yesterday. But despite claims by Cardinal Tonini of the Vatican that "this film does not tell the truth", and its description by the Vatican newspaper, l'Osservatore Romano, as "a hot-tempered and rancorous provocation", The Magdalene Sisters is in the Italian Top 10 for the fifth week in a row, with takings so far of $2,642,808.
When it won the Golden Lion, the top award, at the Venice Film Festival in September, Mullan's equation of injustices in the Catholic Church with extreme religious fundamentalism drew outraged reactions. "The people who honour this film have done so solely for its anti-Catholic content," said Gianni Baget Bozzo, a prominent Catholic intellectual and conservative politician.
Old and new communications
How are museums using new technologies and communication techniques? The question is addressed by an education symposium, Learning in Museums, hosted by the National Gallery, which is open to anyone involved with museums and in the field of formal and informal education. Guests are Dr David Fleming of Britain's Museums Association; Jane Ryder of the Scottish Museums Council; Stephen Allen, head of education at London's National Portrait Gallery; Dr Sally Montgomery, director, W5, Belfast; Pat O'Hareof Muckross House; Liz Coman of the National Gallery; Caroline Carr of Donegal County Museum. Juliette Fritschof the English Heritage Council and Marie Bourke, of the National Gallery of Ireland chair. The symposium is next Friday, 9 a.m. to 5p.m. (€25). For details, contact the education department of the National Gallery of Ireland (01-6633505).
Opening the west to writers
The only writers' centre west of the Shannon - Galway's Western Writers' Centre (Ionad Scríbhneoirí Chaitlín Maude) - is up and running at Canavan House, Nuns' Island in the city. It is holding a short winter school on the weekend of November 29th dedicated to Caitlin Maude, with readings, workshops and debates. For details, tel: 091-533595 or e-mail: writersgalway@eircom.net
Sponsoring a Prize fiasco
A fiasco involving the release of the winning novel's name prior to Tuesday's hyped televised announcement could not have pleased the Man group in its first outing as sponsor of the Booker Prize, writes Eileen Battersby. Having increased the prize money from its long-standing £20,000 to £50,000, Man, an international investment company, probably anticipated an enhanced public profile. But never before in its 34-year history has the prize - often contentious, at times dull, on occasion compromised - looked as silly as this. Yann Martel's surprise victory now appears less fascinating than the unusual methods of the organisers, who have always given the impression that the Booker judges deliberated up until the final moments before the cameras rolled.
Having fretted over the tight deadline and phoned through my story with minutes to spare, it was disconcerting to find out that Internet habitués had known long before traditionalists such as myself, who waited to find out on the night. As no-one views the Internet as a haven of privacy it is unbelievable that the security-conscious Booker organisers would have risked putting such material on the Web. If they were so keen - as they clearly were - to try out their Booker website page, why did they not use test pages featuring Booker novels from previous years?