Ireland's cultural institutions are throwing open their doors to show people the range of work they do, from youth projects to sound art. Shane Hegarty reports
It seems a long way from the National Concert Hall, a man with bells around his ankles, banging on Pringle tins, milk jugs and assorted cymbals and drums. From behind a two-way mirror teachers watch the reactions of a young pupil in the room with him. But here, at the school for children with social-communications difficulties at Children's University Hospital, on Temple Street in Dublin, this one-to-one work sponsored by the NCH is an important part of the week.
It is easy to see why. When four-year-old Jake enters the room he is timid and reluctant. For some minutes Slavek Kwi, a sound artist, plays percussion instruments. He says nothing, only occasionally glancing at the child, until eventually, and slowly, his pupil inches towards the instruments and begins to join in. Still hardly a word is spoken. It is only rhythm and noise for 20 minutes as whistles are blown and gongs crashed. Finally, Jake tires a little and retreats to his chair, and the session ends.
It is, explains Kwi, a way of giving the children both an alternative way to communicate and some freedom to interact with a world they can find confusing. Sometimes a child has spent three sessions hugging the wall rather than engage, but Kwi's patience is impressive, and the rewards have been welcomed by the school, part of St Frances's Clinic at the hospital, which has been developing the classes for three years.
It is part of the National Concert Hall's education, community and outreach programme. These are among the less obvious events and programmes arranged not only by the NCH but also by museums, galleries and other venues that come together under the umbrella of the Council of National Cultural Institutions.
The Irish Museum of Modern Art has run schemes for disadvantaged schools and mounted exhibitions in hospitals. The Abbey Theatre has funded youth projects and involved retirement groups. There have been family days at the National Gallery of Ireland and workshops at the Museum of Country Life. Yet they still struggle against a perception of high-brow stuffiness and exclusion. The education, community and outreach programmes are their response, and if they have the kind of civil-service-speak title that seems a little too dry to be enticing, the colour in the detail makes up for it.
Some events aim to interest people from underprivileged backgrounds in art. Others link up with community and retirement groups, to bring back people who may last have stepped foot in the National Library of Ireland or the Natural History Museum on a school tour. And then, next Saturday, all of the cultural institutions are launching an open week, to show off what they have, give the public a chance to get involved and, with luck, encourage them to come back, enticed by tours, workshops, talks and demonstrations.
Most of the institutions have been providing this type of event for some time, but now they are doing it as part of a strategy not just to remind people of the work they do in the community but also to engage the public with places that are, after all, public property.
"I think all the institutions have lots of things to offer and space to visit," says Jean O'Dwyer, who runs the Abbey's programme, "and once we do get them over that door people will stay and revisit. It is about laying the breadcrumbs for them to come, and once they're in the door they will be excited by what they see. And at some levels it's a very basic excitement. I don't think the institutions are boring; they have exciting materials. There's not a problem once they're in."
Given the competing weekend attractions of the shops, the cinema and the PlayStation, attracting people, especially teenagers, to museums is not easy. "We've lost people as they've gone into second level, because they've thought this isn't the place to hang around," says Helen Beaumont of the Museum of Decorative Arts & History, at Collins Barracks in Dublin, which has run regular workshops. "So it'll be interesting to see if we can keep them.
"When we started we knew we were competing against things like sports or dancing, but we said we all know that, in a class of kids, there are going to be some that are into sports and some that are into drama, but there are always going to be the quieter ones that prefer to draw or look at a book. So we were targeting those children."
Besides, there are other possibilities. "We did do something as a test in the summer, when we got 15 teenagers to come in, and what was quite interesting was that there was a lot of phone numbers being exchanged at the end. That's great if a museum is somewhere you can come to meet a nice girl or a nice boy."
The institutions don't want to be just dating agencies for teens, of course, as each is keen to point out that it is aiming at every age group and section of society. Many parents, they have discovered, use their children's interest as an excuse to visit places they otherwise wouldn't.
There is also great innovation behind some of the programmes: the National Gallery has reproduced some of its most famous paintings as raised prints, so that people with poor vision can appreciate Jack B. Yeats's The Liffey Swim, for example, in three dimensions. The prints are accompanied by cloth, fabric and even entire garments, so the textures that would feature in some of the paintings can be experienced tactilely.
It is no surprise that there is a little idealism. "Fashion changes, but we won't always be a madly driven consumer society," says Catriona Crowe of the National Archives of Ireland, "and I foresee in the future again a rise in the whole business of high-level culture. And we shouldn't pretend that what we've got isn't serious, high- level culture."
There is also an obvious desire to hand the places back to the people. "Underlying all of this is the fact that we are all public institutions," says Crowe.
"We are funded by the State, [and] most of what we do is free. That is never emphasised enough. In spite of some fairly crass ideas of how life should be lived these days in Ireland, it is still publicly funded and freely offered to the citizens. This heritage belongs to the people of Ireland."
OPEN ALL WEEK
The open week begins next Saturday, February 12th at: Chester Beatty Library, www.cbl.ie Irish Museum of Modern Art, www.modern art.ie National Archives of Ireland, www.national archives.ie National Concert Hall, www.nch.ie National Gallery of Ireland, www.nationalgallery.ie National Library of Ireland, www.nli.ie National Museum of Ireland, www. museum.ie (Archaeology & History, Kildare Street, Dublin; Natural History, Merrion Street, Dublin; Decorative Arts & History, Collins Barracks, Dublin; Country Life, Turlough Park, Co Mayo) Abbey Theatre, www.abbeytheatre.ie