ARTSCAPE:IT'S OFFICIAL. The arts are an optional extra. While "An Bord Snip" didn't absolutely press for abolishing the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism, the omens are hardly good, with a suggestion of the "discontinuation of D/AST as a Department in its own right" and proposals to save almost €105 million in 2010, including the annihilation (or rather, "discontinuation of allocation", saving €4.6m) of Culture Ireland and of the Irish Film Board (or rather, the transfer of its functions to a restructured Enterprise Ireland), the loss of 170 jobs across the department and agencies, and a €6.1 million reduction in the Arts Council's allocation, writes DEIRDRE FALVEY
This is all “in light of the lower priority that can be afforded to the areas covered”. So forget the economic impact, forget the jobs, forget the international cultural profile of Ireland, one of our few positive images in the world.
Consolation is that there was no active suggestion arts should be lumped into the, um, dynamic Department of Education. It seems bizarre that there has been the suggestion of the arts and tourism elements being separated, especially with the new buzz in tourism circles, quantifying the huge contribution, and future potential, of cultural tourism. Tourists hardly come for the weather, or the prices, or apparently the friendliness – so we can rely on Irish culture as a draw, to the tune of €5.1 billion a year.
In the meantime, with the department still in situ, it appears to be ploughing ahead with plans for the merger of galleries, with the heads of Bill already drafted, despite wide opposition, and still without any indication of what level of savings might be hoped for.
ESC is 10
It's hard to believe that 10 years have come and gone since director and drama animateur Tom Magill, with encouragement from English Shakespeare Company artistic director Michael Bogdanov, set up a fledgling company in Belfast, writes Jane Coyle. Bogdanov's remit was to update and translate Shakespeare for a modern audience and that theme has continued and expanded. But, for obvious reasons, Magill modified the name into the Educational Shakespeare Company, which ever since has been known in its abbreviated form.
ESC has established itself as an educational charity that uses film and drama in its work with prisoners, ex-prisoners, people on probation, homeless people and young people at risk. Victims also have their place on its agenda and, in the documentary Two Sides of the Coin, a group of medically retired prison officers and their widows were enabled to find expression for their traumatic experiences of kidnap, murder, suicide and torture.
Now, on its 10th anniversary, ESC is expanding its operation and opening an office in Naples, Florida. In charge will be Jennifer Marquis-Muradaz, who ran the ship in Belfast and produced Mickey B, its award-winning adaptation of Macbeth. Although the action was moved to the fictional setting of Burnham Prison, it was the first feature film to be made with long-term inmates in a maximum security prison anywhere in the world. The company takes as its cornerstone a quote from its recently deceased patron, the Brazilian cultural activist, director, politician and Nobel nominee Augusto Boal: "To be a citizen is not merely to live in society but to transform it."
Magill holds firm to that tenet and has an unshakeable faith in the restorative effects of drama, whether realised through film or theatre. He first came to this work in the late 1990s when he and film-maker David Butler, an academic colleague at the University of Ulster, developed a course called Cultural Identity and Representation, which they taught to INLA and Provisional IRA prisoners in the Maze Prison. “It was one of the best experiences I ever had; we were listened to so well by the students,” he says. “To my mind, drama is an exploration of conflict. If, through the work of ESC, we can help one person turn away from re-offending and get his or her life in order, we have succeeded and helped to reduce the number of victims.” esc-film.com
New arts projects nurtured
Culture Ireland hasn’t bit the dust, and the money hasn’t dried up there yet; this week it announced a round of grants to support projects over the next few months. There is a particularly strong programme of work in the US; key US festivals and venues, especially the global cultural centre of New York, offer Irish artists and companies a chance to break through internationally, as arts and culture play such a strong role in lifting Ireland’s reputation in the US and around the world. Some €450,000 will be invested by the agency in an impressive selection of writers, composers, theatre and dance companies to present work in Europe, Asia, the US, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Over €170,000 goes to Irish arts projects in the US, where over 70 Irish artists in theatre, music, visual arts, literature and film present work. Irish productions in this year's 1st Irish Festival in New York in September include Fishamble's award-wining production of Sebastian Barry's The Pride of Parnell Street, Megan Riordan in Luck(Making Strange Theatre Company) and Billy Roche in Tales from Rainwater Pond(Wexford Arts Centre). Spinning the Timeswill feature five new short plays by women writers (Geraldine Aron, Lucy Caldwell, Rosalind Haslet, Rosemary Jenkinson, Belinda McKeon) based on headlines from the New York Times.
Paula Meehan and Harry Clifton are among Irish poets in Poetry Fest 2009 at the Irish Arts Centre in New York, which also hosts Andy Irvine and Donal O'Kelly's The Cambria, this autumn. Other Irish artists heading for the US include Frank McGuinness, Mark O'Halloran and Lenny Abrahamson, who will feature in a series of readings and talks at the Glucksman Ireland House (New York); the Cross Border Orchestra US tour (five venues in New York and Washington); Maud Cotter presenting Rumpus Roomat the Point B Gallery (New York); new work by Eddie Kennedy at the John Cacciola Gallery, Chelsea (New York); and an Oisín Byrne exhibition at the Lewis/Frank Gehry Library (New Jersey).
Other projects getting Culture Ireland support include the Abbey for Mark O'Rowe's Terminusat the Melbourne International Arts Festival; Fabulous Beast's production of Giselle at the Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, and the Sydney Festival, Australia; Colin Dunne performing Out of Timein Singapore; the first Irish Film Festival in South Africa (Johannesburg and Cape Town); and Colum McCann, Sebastian Barry and Colm Tóibín at the International Literature Festival in Berlin.