It is hard to read The Irish Times's coverage of arts policy in Ireland without feeling that there is an influential anti-Fianna Fail lobby whose views somehow pervade that coverage. Is it because these voices are broadly representative, or are the only voices available? Or is it evidence of a relatively small coterie of "people we know" setting the agenda? The Arts Editor of The Irish Times, Victoria White, gave some clues on radio when asked about the new Arts Council. "I can't assess this council on the basis of names on a sheet, some of the people we don't know may turn out to be the most sparkling on this council." "You may not know these people, but other people know them," replied Brian Farrell, new chairman of the Arts Council.
"She had a hard act to follow" not only heads off last week's assessment by Victoria White of Sile de Valera's first year in office, but underlies The Irish Times's own view. References continue to be made to "the golden age of Michael D.", who was "a jewel of the last administration" and whose "performance was highly impressive". These are juxtaposed with references to Sile de Valera such as "low energy", "inertia", "failure to philosophise", "often uninspiring speeches", "unfulfilled promises", "no discernable vision" and "lack of leadership". Whose voices are we hearing here?
Could these be the same voices who also characterised Sile de Valera's new appointments to the Arts Council as lightweight, amateur, rural and worst of all, Gaelic and nationalist? (Dublin 4 will linger in dusty pages!) In reality this new council consists of arts animateurs and practitioners who have been working at the coal face of the arts for years, and who are at the cutting edge of the integration of quality, professional work into Ireland's communities, regions and sectors. If Michael D. had appointed them, it would have been hailed as a triumph for "access and community".
Then there was The Irish Times's coverage of the recent Arts Council Consultative Conferences, which can be summed up as follows: The vital independence of the Arts Council is being threatened by undue association with a Minister whose understanding of the arts is limited to what are now famously dubbed "para-arts" issues, and whose priorities are at odds with those of the broad arts sector. Again, this view was supported by liberal quotation from the same old voices. So the fictional photo-fit of Fianna Fail as fools or philistines is framed.
The reality, it seems to me, is quite different. Firstly, Michael D.'s Ministry was not all that it is cracked up to be. An early flurry of valuable initiatives in the audio-visual and heritage sectors, and a quantum leap in Arts Council funding, were followed by a series of failures in broadcasting policy, the National Institutions, and even his own three-year Arts Plan. Then The Irish Times played an honourable role in pointing up those deficiencies, to which the Minister responded with petulance. So, also, does The Irish Times acknowledge that Higgins's sole credible opponent at the time was Sile de Valera. She, too, was ticked off for her pains. "How dare you question me on this?" Michael D. once responded to her in the Dail, at Question Time. And that will be the abiding memory of the man as Minister for Culture. I don't want Sile de Valera to provide "leadership", "vision", "inspiration" and "philosophy" if it means her telling us all what we ought to be thinking or doing for ourselves. If "inertia" is another word for listening before acting, and "low energy" is another term for not firing off on all cylinders, then maybe we could do with some of each. I don't know what we in the arts are going to get from Sile de Valera in the long run, any more than anybody else does. But I'd be happy enough with her if she got the money. That's all that's required for the moment, and anything less than £30 million for 1999 will be hard to stand over. That's her job now.
It's up to artists and arts workers to define the policy and the practice, to philosophise and inspire. That's our job. That requires a hell of a lot. One strand in that weave will be the Consultative Process which earned The Irish Times headline: "Concern at seeming lack of full independence of Arts Council". There were other concerns. The fundamental and repeated one was: "Who is making policy?" Minister de Valera answered that question. "The Arts Council," she said unequivocally, and on the record. It is clear to me that the Minister will regard the next Arts Plan as her policy, and she has charged the Arts Council to prepare it, without preconditions, in consultation with the broad arts community.
The Arts Council, for its part, has engaged its constituency of artists and clients in a process of evaluation and recommendation for this "rolling" plan. The agenda for "The Domain of the next Arts Plan" discussion at the Limerick conference was set in response to the Minister's expressed priorities about arts access for all, redefining disability, and the centrality of the Irish language. Was there another agenda that should have been put up for discussion? Mine, Patricia Quinn's, Martin Drury's, Bernard Loughlin's? So together, through the day, the contributors deconstructed the Minister's domain, and re-encompassed it within a larger vision of the arts. For it is our job, too, to have the vision. Our Minister can most effectively express to her Cabinet colleagues our vision of ourselves. This we now have a unique opportunity to fashion for them.
As Declan Gorman quite rightly suggested in your letters column last week, the ball is now firmly in the court of all those who gathered at Malahide, Limerick, and beyond, to make the next Arts Plan from the bottom upward. The invitation from the Arts Council to all interested parties to contribute to this process was indeed challenged as "window dressing". I myself questioned the integrity of their agenda-setting, their capacity to listen, and the reflexiveness of their rapportage. But I also heard, for the first time in 23 years, a Director of the Arts Council say "I was wrong. We haven't got this consultation thing right yet. But we will." I am inclined to believe that Patricia Quinn and her staff will indeed get it right in time.
Fianna Fail is no more interested in dictating arts policy than Labour. They will both go along with the sector's own wisdom. The current wisdom is against "Monument-building", which was no more "at the centre of Fianna Fail's policies on the arts" than Labour's. Institutions and facilities are as useful as programmes and schemes. Capital and current funding are interwoven, and the balance of resources must now be struck. The arts sector has matured beyond the false dichotomy of the State as Patron (Haughey) or the State as Facilitator (Higgins). The State can and should be both. The danger ventilated by all "the usual suspects" in this arts consultative process is that the the State as Economy, via Indecon/Coopers and Lybrand, will require the arts to fulfil a quantifiable role in society as a precondition for funding. So, if the arts do not meet criteria such as job or training numbers, tourist nights, product per head, or lives saved, they have no Cabinet case for the still badly-needed increase in exchequer investment: our arts reduced to social and economic utility, next our culture, and our spirit?
In this respect I took great encouragement from the Minister's personal commitment, expressed at Limerick, to the intrinsic value of artistic activity as something essential for all humankind, to be able to experience in its own terms. Her own references are musical. Each to their own. What matters is that the passion of that conviction is all the ammunition any minister needs when dealing with other highly sophisticated representatives of the people, battling with the Minister for Finance in a Cabinet, all 17 of whom would rather be singing, or reading, or laughing with the people through our arts. Like everybody else!
John Stephenson is an independent arts producer.
