Brian Boyd: Keep the luvvies and hipster chancers away from ‘Creative Ireland’

The great Roman poet Juvenal coined the term “Bread and Circuses” to describe an electorate who no longer cared for its birthright of political involvement but instead were satiated by cheap food and entertainment. Difficult not to think of the satirical splendour of Juvenal when reading about “Creative Ireland” - the new “wellbeing” strategy unveiled by An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, last week.

“We should look no further than the transformative potential of arts, culture and heritage” said Kenny about “Creative Ireland”, which he explained as a five-year programme designed to “place culture at the centre of our lives, for the betterment of our people and for the strengthening of our society”.

But, as always, when faced with bien pensant platitudes about culture, we should not just be looking further but also asking to see some receipts when it comes to unsubstantiated assertions about whether the arts and culture expedite our betterment as people and our strengthening as a society.

The superstition here is the arts and culture are “good for us” - they provide jobs, attract customers and contribute to the wellbeing of a nation. But there is another argument and it deserves its place in this new “national conversation” (and how we love our “national conversations”) about Whose Culture Is It Anyway.

Take the “transformative potential” of the arts mentioned by An Taoiseach. It sounds like the tagline of an advertisement for washing powder. In her piercingly brilliant book, “Everyday Ecstasy”, Marghanita Laski actually examined whether art has any transformational power - which she translated as “moral uplift”.

Do art and culture really make us more compassionate, more sensitive and more altruistic? In short, the answer was a big, booming “No” but perhaps of more interest was the fact that the public - when consulted about “transformative experiences” - were more likely to list “sex” and “skiing” as they were “art”. Which sounds about right.

The Oxford Academic John Carey skewered the pompous pretensions of the "Let Them Eat Culture" brigade in his classic "What Good Are The Arts?". Inter alia, he found that the arts don't really make us better people and their primary importance in society can be merely to confirm social status.

As to the arts and culture giving us pleasure - see the “sex and skiing” argument above.

But the arts are a great civilizing force - which is fine if you define civilization as the subsidising of a symphony orchestra. The inconvenient truth here is that some art is nothing but a monument to social injustice.

The difficulty with “warm blanket” schemes such as Creative Ireland is that we ring-fence the term “culture” in this country, inoculate it against valid criticism and we blindly venerate anyone working in the “creative sphere” - when the truth is quite a few of them are privileged and entitled talentless oafs who you wouldn’t trust with your fast-food order let alone trusting them with providing you with a “transformative” experience.

But if the worthies, the luvvies and those wretched “can we have some Government money for our vibrant, independent, creative hub?” Hipster chancers have their noses kept well away from the Creative Ireland trough, there are some radical ideas in this cross-governmental initiative.

In between all the talk about “Cultural Teams” being appointed, “Cultural Days” being set aside and “Cultural Counties” being ear marked, there is the very real possibility that Creative Ireland understands that the greatest value of the arts and culture is through participation in them as opposed to just being exposed them as spectators. Bottoms up as opposed to Tops down.

But such a democratisation of access to the means of creative production would mean bypassing the current vested interests/hangers on/piss artists that make up our esteemed “Cultural Community”.

Back when he was still sane, Tony Blair tried something similar across the water. It was called “Cool Britannia” and the scornful laughter has yet to subside from that sorry episode.

And it's always a case of caveat emptor when Government and the Arts cosy up.

When you look at what Game of Thrones has done for Northern Ireland - both culturally and economically, you can’t help thinking that all Creative Ireland really needs is to do is for this government to be as cheap a date to Netflix as it already is to Apple.

That way, there’d be enough Bread and Circuses for everyone in the audience.