The Arts Council will submit its third plan to the Government in November. How the plan will affect various arts organisations throughout the island of Ireland is already being keenly debated. Coming at a time when legislation governing the arts is under review, the final document may have a profound impact on how the arts develop in the years ahead.
The new buzz word in the arts world is multi-annual funding. It is a means of delivering financial support to the Arts Council's client organisations over a three-year period. Up to now an annual grant often left arts venues and production companies limping along from year to year. The council is certain to promote this new form of funding in the third plan. However, its introduction has not been greeted with unanimous support.
To gain access to multi-annual funding, ostensibly open to every arts organisation, theatres or production companies must submit a long-term plan, developmental in nature. The authors must agree to vetting procedures to ensure the taxpayer is getting value for money.
But the criteria by which the Arts Council judges applications for multi-annual funding to be suitable are causing considerable friction. For some arts organisations, it is a blessing; for others, not admitted to the scheme, it has led to confusion and angst.
The Meridian Theatre Company, one of four independent production companies in Cork, has been successful in its application. Its artistic director, Mr Johnny Hanrahan, can now plan ahead and commit resources and time to a production schedule as far ahead as November next year.
By contrast, the Cork Opera House, after the news that it had failed to secure funding from the Government's Access scheme which would enable it to complete a £6.5 million capital works programme, has not been included.
Its executive director, Mr Gerry Barnes, says it must cope as best it can with a "standstill" allocation from the Arts Council. The council insists, however, that venues like the Opera House have not been excluded and that multi-annual funding is potentially available to all organisations working in the arts.
Mr Hanrahan says that for successful applicants multi-annual funding means new security and less tension about what the following year may hold. "Under the three-year scheme, people know where they stand. It represents a great opportunity and a huge step forward for the successful applicants" he says.
"In the Cork area, I think it's true to say that the scheme hasn't been introduced so far to any great extent in the theatre venues. In describing the funding landscape at present you would have to say the Cork Opera House, for instance, remains poorly funded compared to theatres of similar size, like the Belfast Grand Opera House which receives more than four times the funding.
"My understanding, though, is that multi-annual funding will be available to all organisations, even if, for whatever reason, many of the various venues are not being brought in at present," Mr Hanrahan says.
For Meridian, guaranteed funding from the council means the company can lay out its schedule with some confidence well into the months ahead. It plans Russian Tales, an adaptation with music of Gogol's The Overcoat, and Dostoevsky's The Double at the Watergate, Kilkenny, on September 20th-22nd. It will then go to Everyman, Cork, in September 25th29th and to the Project, Dublin, from October 1st to 6th.
The company has plans for a production of White Woman Street by Sebastian Barry at the Everyman in February. In May it will present an adaptation of Mind That 'Tis Me Brother by Gaye Shortland, and in November 2002 a coproduction with the National Sculpture Factory in Cork.
Full details of this project are not yet available, but the concept is to create theatre outside the normal venues, and the probability is that the National Sculpture Factory's premises in Cork will be chosen.
Specialising in music theatre, Meridian was formed in 1989. Its raison d'etre is to produce new and little-known works. Since its foundation the collaboration between Johnny Hanrahan and composer John Browne has provided the driving force. Multi-annual funding, Mr Hanrahan says, has enabled the company to enter into long-term commitments, something it could never do before.
For Gerry Barnes, however, there remains the uneasy feeling that the Arts Council, in not making multi-annual funding available to venues like the Opera House, has relegated them to the bottom of some unseen league table. When the new funding arrangement was first announced three years ago, he says, the Opera House and other venues throughout the State made known their interest in switching from the annual grant to the three-year funding system.
Mr Barnes has acted as representative for the venue sector to the Arts Council but insists that no invitation to begin funding talks has been offered.
"There is a genuine fear within the venue sector that the Arts Council is operating a favourites policy and that for some unknown reason which is hard to fathom our sector is not in favour at the moment. No rational explanation has been offered as to why this should be the case and there is a lack of communication between the venues and the council," he says.
"The real worry is that by the time they get around to us, there will be very little left in the kitty. It is an open secret that this Arts Council has not been a happy one. The level of resignations speaks for itself. There is a feeling in the sector that the council is inaccessible, prescriptive and doctrinaire," he adds.
Mr Barnes also points to the auditoria consultants' report to the Arts Council on performance arts venues which includes the following observation: "There was considerable disquiet that venues had not been included in the multi-annual funding approach. This was felt to be inequitable when most venues had their funds frozen."
A spokeswoman for the Arts Council said multi-annual funding was being introduced on a phased basis, and venues were certainly not excluded as a matter of policy. Just now, she added, the council's focus was on preparing the new arts plan for Government. The council had a staff of 32 and some 400 client organisations, besides 2,500 individual artists to deal with.
"We are very stretched at present, and applications for funding are a time/management issue. As soon as we can get to an application we will do so," she added.
As far as can be established, the only other arts organisation in Cork to have been approved for multi-annual funding is the Institute of Choreography and Dance at the Firkin Crane, whose director, Ms Mary Brady, a member of the Arts Council, confirmed that the institute had gone through the negotiation stage and was in the process of establishing evaluation and monitoring systems.