Creating an arts haven in the west

It's not quite the sleepy afternoon one might expect on a small island out off the western seaboard. But then, Inis Oirr, the most southerly outcrop of ┴rainn, should never be taken for granted. ┴ras ╔anna, its arts and cultural centre, is proof of that. Built as a weaving factory by ┌darβs na Gaeltachta, it was derelict until just over a year ago. Now with the help of ┌darβs, the Arts Council, the island co-operative and Galway County Council, it has been transformed into a working space for artists, writers, dramatists, musicians and much more.

Take its 70-seat playhouse, already used by artists like D≤nal O'Kelly, for his one-man show, Catalpa, Tom Hickey, and the Praxis Theatre Company of Frenchpark, Co Roscommon.

Fresh from the Ros-a-Mh∅l ferry on the last Saturday in June, this reporter and her four-year-old joined a group of the island's children as they roared, gasped, giggled and cheered with Spotlight Theatre's SinΘad Beary and Fergus J. Walsh.

The matinΘe performance by the Knickerbocker Glories - Spotlight's troupe for children - was an interpretation of Saint-ExupΘry's Little Prince, complete with his rose and the fox and his many adventures. The previous night, Spotlight's director, Lynda Gough, staged David Mamet's Oleanna on Inis Oirr as part of a nationwide tour extending from Kilworth in Cork to Armagh, Derry and Wexford.

The seed for the building's transformation may have been sown by artist Mick Mulcahy, who spent some time working in the premises in the early 1990s and staged an exhibition. Realising its potential, the island co-op, Comhar Caomhan Teo, commissioned Aonghus McCann, a Dublin architect, to redesign it. Funding from ┌darβs and the Department of Arts, Heritage, the Gaeltacht and the Islands facilitated the refurbishment and renovation, and new equipment was paid for by the Arts Council. It was leased at a nominal rent from ┌darβs.

Val Ballance, its director, has been almost a year on the island now. A former computer consultant and teacher from Clontarf in Dublin, Ballance has fluent Irish. That and his experience with the Inis Cealtra festival in east Clare secured him the appointment, advertised on behalf of D·chas Inis Oirr, the subsidiary of the co-op established to run the centre.

"I worked on the Inis Cealtra festival with artist Nicola Henley from 1996, and it taught me a lot about community arts, dealing with performers and performances, chasing funding and all that," he says. He began in ┴ras ╔anna by regarding each room as a "project" - and there are many such "projects" in the 6,400 square-foot building, which has two wings and an amphitheatre effect provided accidentally by a courtyard in between.

One of the first initiatives was the establishment of an artist-in-residence scheme. "We fixed up an apartment and a studio with a high ceiling, offering lots of light that one can be so starved of in the west. And we began to look around. Seβn ╙ Flaithearta was a natural choice."

A native of Inis M≤r, ╙ Flaithearta studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, the Pennsylvania School of Arts, and the ╔cole Nationale SupΘrieure des Arts de la Chambre in Brussels. In April , work completed during his residency from November to March was exhibited in a show entitled, "An Cosβn Dearg" (The Red Path), meaning the path of life.

One of his larger canvases was also prepared for mounting outside the building - a striking interpretation of the legend of Diarmuid and Grβinne.

╙ Flaithearta was succeeded in March by Mireille Guegant from Paris, who has been a frequent visitor to Inis Oirr over the past few years. She has other Irish connections, having exhibited at Andrew's Lane Theatre in Dublin as far back as 1991, in the Irish College in Paris in 1998 and the Alliance Francaise, Dublin, in the same year in collaboration with Irish writer, P≤l Breathnach. Do Lorg: Dβnta agus Aortha/Traces de ton passage: poΦmes et satires by P≤l Breathnach, with eight paintings by Guegant, was awarded the prize in the Gradam Litr∅ochta Chl≤ Iar-Chonnachta 1997, and was short-listed for the Irish Times literature prizes in 1999.

The French ambassador, Gabriel de Bellescize, flew out on his first visit to Inis Oirr to open Guegant's exhibition, entitled Writing of the Landscape, the Landscape of Writing, in ┴ras ╔anna on June 30th. Earlier that day, he attended the formal opening of the island's new library by the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, ╔amon ╙ Cuiv, and Connie N∅ Fhatharta, chair of Galway County Council. There was a beguiling sense of spontaneity and effortlessness about the evening's activity, yet preparation had obviously been meticulous - right down to the brown bread and jam for the children, along with smoked salmon for their parents, at the library event.

The director knows that bums on seats cannot be the overwhelming priority in such a setting, given the small island population - which multiplies during the summer months of July and August, but still won't break box -office records. However, he has already run a festival, in April, which included a 90-minute version of Hamlet, initially out of doors in the courtyard, presented by the Praxis company.

Films are screened in the theatre during the winter and Ballance hopes to put on a season of Bob Quinn material this summer. He would also like to build a film archive relating to ┴rainn and the Gaeltacht islands, including documentaries like the Radharc film on Inis Oirr screened recently on RTE.

There are plans for a youth centre, with activities related to music and drama, and Ballance would like to host conferences on themes such as writing in Irish, inspired by a recent debate on the merits of writers in English turning to Erse. The old weaving equipment in ┴ras ╔anna will be revived and put to good use; and Jim Horgan of Furbo has offered to help run a boat-building training scheme.

From July 2nd to July 6th, musician Micheβl ╙ hAlmhain hosted "Craiceann: Lock up your Goats !", being the title of the Inis Oirr international bodhrβn summer school, while Diarmuid de Faoite took out his one-man play based on the writer, Padraic ╙ Conaire. ┴ras ╔anna would hope to have a writer-in-residence shortly, and is open to applications - while stressing that the space won't be available during the months of July and August.

Mary Cloake of the Arts Council pays tribute to the role of the island co-op in realising the venture. "Successive arts councils have been involved with this project, and it has been very exciting to have been with it from early on. But it is very much the island's own. It is to the co-op's credit that ┴ras ╔anna is where it is," she says.

Writing of the Landscape, the Landscape of Writing by Mireille Guegant, painter-in-residence at Inis Oirr, continues at ┴ras ╔anna until the end of August.