FROM THE ARCHIVES:In 1986, the unemployment rate was 17 per cent, tens of thousands of young people were emigrating, the debt to GDP ratio was above 100 per cent, and Garret FitzGerald's coalition government was trying to save money. Among the spending cuts it imposed was a sharp drop in the Arts Council's budget, as this report by David Nowlan recorded. –
THE ARTS Council did not consider resigning in the face of what its director described yesterday as an extraordinarily fraught situation.
The director, Mr. Adrian Munnelly, addressing a press briefing on the subject of the council’s decision to suspend funding for all festivals, said that the council accepted responsibility for all the decisions it had taken. Those decisions had been taken primarily on the basis of the finance available in an effort to preserve the established centres of the arts in Ireland.
“All of this has been appalling – no question about it,” said Mr. Munnelly. But the council did not consider resigning because there would have been no solution in running away from the problems facing the arts – and the council had been saying for the past two years that there was a crisis in arts funding.
That crisis led last week to a decision to withdraw funding from all festivals. Already, nine festivals have been advised that their grants have been suspended in 1986 due to inadequate Government funding. These are the Kilkenny Arts Week, the Clonmel Arts Week, the Sligo Community Arts Festival, the Galway Arts Festival, Cibeal Cincise in Kenmare, Listowel Writers’ Week, Clifden Arts Week, the Cork Choral Festival and the two most internationally famous events – the Wexford Opera Festival and the Dublin Theatre Festival.
All theatrical touring activities will also not be funded this year.
The Arts Council decided that these cuts were necessary because it had received only £5.8 million from the Government, in place of £13 million which the council had reckoned was needed to sustain the arts in Ireland during 1986. Ironically, the Scottish Arts Council, dealing with a population, a territory and activities largely similar to those in Ireland, received exactly £13 million from the British government for 1986.
Mr. Munnelly said that the council here had decided that its priorities had to be to support individual creative artists and to provide support for “the points of access to the arts which are permanently established and operate on a year-round basis.”
“For years all of the arts across the board have had equal misery applied to them. This is possible no longer,” said Mr. Munnelly. Accordingly, festival grants and theatre touring grants have been suspended.
But, more positively, the grant to Aosdana is being increased by £50,000. Funding will be made available to the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork, the Garter Lane Arts Centre in Waterford, the Temple Bar Studios in Dublin, the Wexford Arts Centre, the Belltable Arts Centre in Limerick, Nun’s Island Centre for the Arts in Galway, and the Project Arts Centre in Dublin.
There is to be a 20 per cent increase in the budget available for film, with £33,000 going to the Federation of Irish Film Societies, and increased grants to the Ha’penny Film Club and the Irish Film Institute as well as £50,000 for film and video project awards in 1986.
The Dublin Grand Opera Society will still be funded and there is to be a new indigenous Opera Theatre Company (whose grant, ironically, will be about the same as the sum withdrawn from the Wexford Festival).
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