Where's the beef?

Cork 2005: The first of a weekly diary from the European Capital of Culture reports how delays and confusion are hindering some events

The question in Cork at the moment is not so much where's me culture as where's me programme? The honourable exceptions - Peter Murray with C2 at the Crawford, Triskel with Emigrance and Unveiling in Tobin Street and at the Bodega, the Glucksman with Forty Shades of Green at UCC, the Vision Centre with the first phase of Enlargement - point up the gaps in the unrolling of Cork as European Capital of Culture 2005. This sense of vacancy gets us off to a begrudging start, emphasised by the continued vivacity of Where's Me Culture? (now settling down as WMC?), and the introduction last weekend of a Speakers' Corner, led by veteran defender of free speech, Rossa Ó Snodaigh.

So, rather in the manner of a singer clearing the throat before launching into an aria, the whinging begins with a comment from a source deep within the 2005 organisation itself: "culture is great but you do require a stairs!". This refers to the reason two important exhibitions at the Cork Public Museum could not open on the dates appointed: the Cork International Exhibition on January 10th and The Magic of Masks and Puppets from Scotland on January 19th.

With both curator and architect out sick, and a portion of the stairway in the long-awaited new extension not yet complete, the necessary hand-over could not take place, and the museum, in FitzGerald's Park, remained closed. Instead, its programme, and its fine new galleries, will be formally inaugurated on a date as yet unconfirmed close to the end of this month.

Equally, anyone hoping for a glimpse of John Minihan's photographs of west Cork's food culture due for display in early January at the Farm Gate restaurant in the English Market will have to be content with the menu until the first week of February when there may be an official launch of Expression. This event has been postponed because - again - neither the restaurant nor its co-host, O'Conaill Chocolatiers in French Church Street, are ready to mount it.

As for Seamus O'Connell's Ivorytoweribus (a meal to be presented in an unexpected location each Sunday in 2005), January hopefuls are still hungry. Several calls to the listed number are not returned, and when someone finally answers, the news is that chef O'Connell is abroad and that the staff have no information on the event "whatsoever".

Such absences add to a public perception that the city of culture is invisible; things are on and venues open, but have to be discovered. So who could be blamed for thinking that Cork is not, as proclaimed in the programme book, a city of making, but is instead a city of making up?

The presenters of Ray Scannell's pageant, Red Sun, for example, insisted that the school children involved should subvert their natural - probably suburban - Cork accents to the preferred patois of a terrain which remained mysterious in theatrical terms but must have been intended to convey north-side veracity.

Cork 2005 board-member Theo Dorgan once wrote, unforgettably, "we are who we are and what we do, but we keep the skill to make a legend of the ordinary". This could be a mantra for a city's confidence in itself, yet the idea is current that even with its thematic choice of a serpent (relating to a folk-tale unknown to the majority of the citizens) as the opening spectacle, the 2005 organisation lost sight of what Cork is.

This suspicion originated in its decision not to do an audit of the city and its practitioners, although such a consultation process had the potential to rally existing strengths of experience, expertise and vision.

At the very least, it would have garnered the support of those now gathering under the banner of WMC?, and those pointing to the alienating choice of emblematic colours - not the red and white of Cork but the black and gold of Kilkenny.

Despite the laudable intention of inclusivity, 2005 plc hasn't quite recognised what Cork already had to offer, even though the Capital of Culture designation was won on the basis of the city's existing cultural achievements and achievers.

And while this sense of exclusion has led to dispute and discouragement, the most serious lapse was the simplest thing of all. A lot of the animosity among arts practitioners in the city has arisen not from rejection of proposals or last-minute refusals of funding, but from the 2005 organisation's inability to acknowledge letters, to return telephone calls, or to convey timely decisions. When "lack of communication" is cited as a criticism, this is what is meant: the frustration of being ignored despite, in some cases, a long, reliable and prestigious contribution to the cultural life of Cork.