Tradition looking for a break

The report of the Special Committee on the Traditional Arts - Nine months in gestation, another eight in the delivery, writes Siobhán Long

The report, commissioned by Minister John O'Donoghue in December 2003, and delivered in September 2004, was greeted enthusiastically by many in the traditional arts world, including the Arts Council.

Yet although at the report's launch, Olive Braiden, chairwoman of the Arts Council, said that "the Council has adopted its main policy recommendations", and Minister O'Donoghue said "the Arts Council must now take a more active role in the development and support of the traditional arts", many are concerned about the lack of progress over the past eight months.

Even as recently as April 14th, the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, during a visit to the Arts Council, stated that the Arts Act 2003 "expands the remit of the council to include new art forms and includes the traditional arts at the heart of mainstream culture".

But three months after the launch of the special committee's report, the December budget announcements by the Arts Council revealed that the traditional arts would receive €646,240 in revenue funding (in comparison to €14.5 million for theatre, €4.6 million for visual arts and €2.79 million for opera).

To the shock of many traditional artists, this included a cut of €90,000 in the budget for the Irish Traditional Music Archive, widely considered a lynchpin of the traditional arts, and identified in the report as an already grossly under-funded resource.

Katie Verling, director of Glór Irish Music Centre in Ennis, and a member of the original special committee on the traditional arts, is angry at the way in which the report's recommendations have languished in the shadows while the traditional arts community has continued to struggle with under-funding.

"I feel terribly disappointed that even though the report was warmly welcomed by the Minister and by the Arts Council, now nine months after its birth, staff in the Arts Council don't even regard it as policy," she declares. "The traditional arts do not need development. They need support, and more especially, they need parity of esteem, because they have been outsiders for so long, and to achieve parity of esteem, they have to have the benefit of affirmative action."

Muiris Ó Rocháin, programme director of the Willie Clancy Summer School in Miltown Malbay, is mystified by the recent claim by John O'Kane, arts programme director at the Arts Council, at a consultative meeting held on April 19th, that the committee report is not, in fact, Arts Council policy.

"I was surprised to hear that the report was not considered policy," he says. "As far as I understood it at the launch, the recommendations were well received by the Arts Council, so I can't fathom why so little has happened in the meantime. I was taken aback by the reduction in funding for the [traditional music] archive in particular, after the report had said that it was something that needed a lot of additional support."

Dermot McLaughlin, Donegal fiddler and former traditional arts officer in the Arts Council, is equally dissatisfied.

"Speaking personally," he says, "I'm actually optimistic in the long term, and full of expectation, but based on recent signals, I think the Arts Council really have to prove themselves. At a recent consultative meeting in the Arts Council, we heard that neither the report nor the Arts Council's response to it was Arts Council policy - that there was no policy. We were there, thinking that we were contributing to a discussion on how to implement the policy and the recommendations of the report."

McLaughlin is quick to balance his concerns about Arts Council policy with a clear expression of support for the recently appointed traditional arts consultant, Liz Doherty.

"Liz Doherty has the full respect of the community. She has fantastic ideas for making this work, and they're based on the recommendations of a report that a statutorily-appointed Arts Council adopted last September. My concern is that Liz has been given a job, but not the resources or the authority to do it. We want a deeply resourced officer, one who has the tools and the authority to do the job. A part-time post with no budget or other resources is not deeply resourced."

McLaughlin pinpoints the reality that faces the Arts Council, which set expectations high with the September publication of Towards A Policy On The Traditional Arts.

"The report flagged a willingness to do things better and differently," he recounts. "It flagged openness and respect, and taking the art form on its own terms. It acknowledged a need for more money, and shortly afterwards, Minister O'Donoghue increased the Arts Council's budget significantly. Then, we saw totally non-rational decisions being taken, that nobody in the traditional music community could understand. That has caused a mixture of suspicion and disbelief. A lot of that concern has been allayed by the appointment of Liz, but the big issue now is whether she will get the authority to ensure that when decisions are being made, the traditional arts are at the table."

McLaughlin identifies the immediate priorities which, he says, if pursued, would go a long way toward building a positive relationship between the Arts Council and the traditional arts community.

"There is the need for a strong policy initiative with a budget for a period of time to bring the traditional arts up to a level comparable with other arts forms," he suggests. "Second, a properly resourced executive with authority, who is professionally competent, and Liz Doherty is certainly that. Third, there's a need for a pro-active initiative on the Arts Council's part to go out into the traditional music community and let them know that they exist, because there's an enormous opportunity here to harness strong national and global respect, both for the traditional arts and for the Arts Council.

"Fourth, the Arts Council needs to show that it is alert to what is going on around it. You cannot make strategy if you're out of date. If the advice and experience of the traditional arts community, who are world-renowned experts at what they do, is not considered the best, I don't know what is."

One Arts Council action on which there has been unequivocal unanimity is the support for the March appointment of Doherty. This was one of the primary recommendations of the special committee's report. "Everyone welcomes Liz as a practitioner and as a specialist," Muiris Ó Rocháin says. "She's a person who really knows Irish music, who has a high standing among traditional musicians. But she's employed as a consultant, so there is still no officer within the executive who is speaking on behalf of traditional music."

Doherty herself is adamant that despite perceptions of inaction, the Arts Council's current consultative process across all sectors will result in a comprehensive and cohesive traditional arts policy, a draft of which will be published later this month. She views the special committee's report as a document informing policy, rather than articulating policy in itself.

"The bottom line is that the report is titled Towards A Policy On The Traditional Arts," she notes. "The Arts Council has accepted the recommendations in it, but we are now in the process of writing condensed policy statements which will be what we will be implementing our actions from, and they will be published as part of our overall strategy. That's what I was looking for guidance on, by meeting a wide cross-section of people from the traditional arts recently."

Suggestions have been made that the forthcoming draft Arts Council policy may include the provision for proposal-based funding applications to be made by traditional artists; for the broadening of criteria to accommodate the wider performance arenas in which traditional music is played (pubs, community halls, and so on); and that a concerted effort will be made on the Arts Council's part to promote its presence across a somewhat suspicious and fractured traditional arts community.

Amid a burgeoning feeling of grievance and disillusionment, there is also a widespread sense of expectation that the Arts Council will ultimately deliver. The content of the draft strategy will determine the tenor of future discussions between the council and the artists it is charged with serving.

Dermot McLaughlin balances optimism with a wariness borne of his experience of the recent consultative meeting.

"The fly in the ointment is this Sir Humphrey Appleby behaviour," he insists, "and if Ireland has produced Sir Humphrey Appleby to deal with traditional music, we should all pack away our fiddles, stash our bodhráns, never sing another song, and all buy iPods."