ArtScape: Hot on the heels of last week's shock announcement by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland that it was pulling the plug on Belfast's Ormeau Baths Gallery has come a collection of mixed messages, which will directly impact on the future of the arts across the North, writes Jane Coyle.
First the good news. A new home is at last in prospect for the Old Museum Arts Centre (Omac), which, since 1990, has been instrumental in the development and support of local artists and performers, as well as being a receiving house for cutting-edge, small-scale international tours.
The Northern Ireland Department of Culture, Arts & Leisure has allotted £4 million (€5.8m), with an additional £4 million coming from the Arts Council Lottery Fund, towards a £9.232 million (€13.4m) purpose-built arts centre in the city's Cathedral Quarter. Laganside Corporation has gifted the £550,000 (€802,000) site, leaving the Omac with a fundraising target of £1 million (€1.45m). It now joins Belfast's Lyric Theatre and Crescent Arts Centre in seeking to raise money for major construction work.
Since 1997, Omac staff and board have been at the forefront of a series of surveys and studies on an arts facility aimed at bringing Belfast into line with ". . . the kind of cultural provision offered by every major city in the UK and Ireland".
But, as Northern arts minister David Hanson MP was waxing lyrical about ". . . the cultural renaissance that is taking place in Belfast" and laying out ". . . the government's strategy to encourage arts and culture to lead the way in Belfast's social and economic regeneration . . .", many among the packed gathering were nervously awaiting long-overdue news about their annual core funding from the Arts Council.
Twenty-four hours later, word started to seep through. In this, Belfast's centenary year, heralded by the City Council as an occasion for celebration and trumpet-blowing, the Belfast Festival at Queen's has seen its funding cut by 50 per cent. Three of the city's leading independent theatre companies, Tinderbox, Prime Cut and Kabosh, have had their funding increased by around 1 per cent - 2 per cent below the rate of inflation; Replay, the North's prolific theatre-in-education company, has suffered a 17 per cent drop, while the Omac's revenue funding has been raised by £27,000 (€39,400), having been at a standstill for the past three years. The Lyric Theatre, struggling to maintain its role as the North's flagship producing house, remains at standstill.
But it was away from Belfast that the pinch is really being felt, not least by some of the major regional venues: the Riverside Theatre in Coleraine, The Market Place in Armagh, the Burnavon Arts Centre in Cookstown and the Ardhowen Theatre in Enniskillen, which have all taken cuts of 50 per cent.
While nobody wishes to rain on the Omac's parade, the general consensus is that the bigger picture is not a pretty one.
Funding for the North from the Treasury in London is at the lowest per capita level in the UK and the differential with England, Wales and Scotland continues to widen.
Cúirt talks free speech
Freedom of Speech: a Right or a Weapon? is the title of this year's debate at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature which is marking its 21st birthday in Galway next month, writes Lorna Siggins.
The panel for the debate on April 28th, chaired by Prof John Horgan of DCU, will include Irish Times journalist Lara Marlowe, Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy, Al-Jazeera bureau chief Yosri Fouda (subject to work commitments), Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail and Irish Ambassador to Finland Antoin MacUnfraidh.
Expanding on the theme, Galway Youth Theatre will stage the Irish premiere of Talking to Terrorists by Robin Soans during the festival, which runs from April 25th to 30th. The production, directed by Andrew Flynn, is based on interviews with people who have been involved directly and indirectly with terrorism.
Director Maura Kennedy has put together an impressive international programme, mixing and matching writers from Tunisia, Iraq, Kurdistan, Israel, Lebanon, Slovenia, Egypt, Tanzania, Britain and the US with Irish counterparts.
Dava Sobel, author of Longitude, will deliver the Anne Kennedy Memorial Lecture, while Drago Jancar reads with Edna O'Brien, Leland Bardwell reads with Robert Bly, and Seamus Heaney shares the stage with Nikki Giovanni. The festival marks the centenary of MáirtíÓ Cadhain by publishing a commemorative bilingual edition of Dhá Scéal/Two Stories. Workshops include a prose masterclass with DBC Pierre, poetry masterclasses with Mark Doty and Kat Francois, the poetry grand slam and bardic brunch, "junior" Cúirt, exhibitions, a trip to Coole Park and much more. See www.galwayartscentre.ie/cuirt and tel: Galway Arts Centre at 091-565886.
Cat's new home in Cork
Cork's newest theatre is to open in October with the first performance of a play by Patrick Galvin, writes Mary Leland.
Evicted during the recent redevelopment of Carroll's Quay (opposite the Opera House) the Cork Arts Theatre, which is fondly known as the Cat Club, will be re-housed in the new complex, as a proprietor instead of a tenant this time
and strengthened by the
formation of a resident repertory company.
The first presentation in this 100-seater auditorium with dressing-rooms, rehearsal room
and public bar will be The Cage, written by Galvin about
a decade ago and dealing with the women on the "Dirty Protest" in Armagh Jail.
"This is a story which hasn't been told," says theatre manager
Dolores Mannion, adding that negotiations with a potential director and production company are under way.
The piece is demanding: several of the seven-strong female cast will have to appear naked on stage, but Mannion says that the theatre is committed to presenting it in Cork.
Although the Cork Arts Theatre was closed necessarily during 2005, Galvin was still at work.
With the poet Robert O'Donoghue
he produced the volume of
poems by Yilmaz Odibassi from Turkey in the Cork 2005 poetry translations series.
The Galvin premiere will also mark the emergence of the theatre as an exhibition area and as
an essential meeting place for the arts community in Cork, continuing its now almost-legendary link
with the old Cat Club in the South Main Street and its lively
tradition of intimate or experimental drama.
Its writers' competition, which has run for the last 26 years,
will be the basis for its identity as a "writers' theatre", according to Mannion.
Carey says au revoir
Helen Carey, the director of the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, has told the centre's Irish and French board that she will resign at the end of this year, writes Lara Marlowe.
Carey moved to the Irish College when it reopened in October 2002 after €10.5 million in Irish Government- funded renovations. She was previously director of the Galway Arts Centre.
Carey has transformed the college into a dynamic cultural centre which hosts approximately 45 lectures, readings and conferences annually, several visual arts exhibitions and concerts, and major celebrations for St Patrick's Day and Bloomsday. With a staff of eight, the College has an annual turnover of more than €1 million.
Most of the college's 45 rooms are rented to Irish students. Artists-in-residence at the moment include the actors Olwen Fouéré and Selena Cartwell, the sound artist Dennis McNulty and the painter Camille Souter.
Carey does not know whether she will work in Paris or Ireland after leaving the Centre Culturel. "The Irish College needs to shift all the time," she says, explaining her departure.
The cancellation of the second half of Kurt Masur's London Philharmonic concert at the National Concert Hall on Sunday afternoon was a disappointment to all concerned. The news since then, however, has been good. Masur, who had been experiencing heart palpitations, was discharged from hospital on Sunday night and has returned to Germany for further treatment. The London Philharmonic is away on its US tour, with Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä taking Masur's place. And the NCH has done a U-turn from Sunday's firm line of no refunds to one of issuing a full refund to all ticket holders.