At its meeting on Thursday, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) deferred a decision on setting up new promotional and archival services for composers in Northern Ireland, writes Michael Dervan.
The deferral may leave NI composers in a limbo, as the Contemporary Music Centre (CMC), the Dublin-based national archive and resource centre for new music, last month announced the cessation of services for composers in Northern Ireland from October 1st.
The new proposals were unanimously approved last week at a Belfast meeting which was attended by a majority of Northern Irish composers as well as representatives from ACNI and an observer from the Arts Council in Dublin.
The new services would see Belfast Central Library hosting an archive of some 400 BBC sound recordings as well as physical and digital copies of scores. International profile would be achieved through a website (updatable by the composers themselves), which would include downloadable materials, and provide details for making direct contact.
Additional support services would be provided through placements "for young musicians who want to learn the trade," assisting composers in the administrative routine of promoting their work.
The background to the breach between CMC and Northern Irish composers is extraordinary. For a number of years, CMC has argued that it needed a higher proportion of its budget to be provided by ACNI. Yet, while pursuing that argument, CMC failed to apply for funding this year. Having missed a November 2003 application deadline, CMC did not contact ACNI about the matter until February 2004.
The organisation ceased to be an ACNI client on March 31st, and, as any funding that it might have expected in 2004 has been redistributed, may face an uphill struggle to regain the £20,000 (€29,700) funding that it previously had. CMC's 2004 funding from the Arts Council in Dublin is €341,000.
CMC circularised all its registered composers in mid-August, openly admitting that the lost funding was a CMC failure, and notifying them of the withdrawal of promotion and documentation services for composers in Northern Ireland. The e-mail to composers even couched its description of the continuation of services to NI composers up to the October cutoff as being "on a goodwill basis, to facilitate a period of consultation for all parties". Yet, in spite of the self-inflicted funding damage, and the unilateral withdrawal of services, CMC still insists that its wish is to continue to work on an all-Ireland basis.
ACNI arts development director, Dr Philip Hammond (a composer), expressed regret "that this situation has come about through an administrative oversight on CMC's part. But I think it would be irresponsible had we not tried to formulate contingency plans as the situation developed and indeed to consult with the constituency in Northern Ireland." The new proposals, estimated to cost £6,500, should not, he said, be regarded as a bar to CMC applying for funding in 2005.
CMC chairman, Dr Joseph Ryan, has questioned "whether a division of service to an area such as new music is the optimum solution". The CMC, he said, "remains concerned that the potential consequences of such a fundamental strategic change be fully explored. CMC remains open to discussion on this matter and it favours a decision that results in a continuation of what has been an excellent example of cross-Border co-operation."
He's echoing, although from a completely different perspective, the composer (unidentified in ACNI's record) at the meeting in Belfast, who said, "It seems strange to punish individual NI composers and not simply do a partial reduction of services to all composers." And the antipathy many creative artists have expressed towards arts administrators will hardly be eased by CMC's punitive response to its own major internal administrative failure.
Slash and burn at Abbey
The crisis at the Abbey may have been brewing for a couple of years, but it's terrible timing that it should come to a head in its centenary year, and with the artistic director away, this time in Australia with the tour of The Gigli Concert. Over the past months rumours have been rife - about the financial shortfall, the inability to commit to specific dates for shows, the announced departure of the artistic director, the appalling morale within the company and a general impression of rudderlessness. The slash and burn announced this week sounds extreme, not least for the large number who are due to lose their jobs, but also for the notion of what a national theatre is all about.
If the Abbey ceases to have a literary department to foster new writing or ends its outreach programme, it becomes less a national theatre - and less able to justify the public funding it enjoys, and indeed which a national theatre deserves. You have to wonder when the rot started, and why it was allowed to get to this stage unchecked.
Ballymun's speaking trees
One of the central projects of Ballymun Regeneration's Per Cent for Art programme is Jochen Gerz's amaptocare, writes Aidan Dunne. When Gerz, a German-born, Paris-based artist with considerable experience of public art projects, first visited Ballymun and met administrators, he noticed that there were hardly any trees. He came up with the ambitious idea of inviting Ballymun residents to buy trees to be planted in public sites. Half the cost of each tree would be covered by sponsorship, and each would be accompanied by a plaque with a text by the resident who paid for it. Gerz edited responses to a single question: What would this tree say if it could speak? Given the harsh treatment that trees planted in public sites have been known to receive in Dublin, there was a certain degree of scepticism about the idealism of Gerz's scheme. But having worked with communities in England, France, Germany and elsewhere, he himself had no doubts and, so far, he's been proved right. Currently, amaptocare has 420 sponsored trees. Judging on past performance, Gerz has a knack for tapping into people's feelings, memories and aspirations, and Ballymun residents have reportedly risen to the challenge of answering his question. Many of the texts for the panels, reports project manager Sheena Barrett, "are quite beautiful".
Patrick Fottrell and Desmond Fitzgerald were appointed this week as governors and guardians of the National Gallery. Dr Fottrell, professor of biochemistry, registrar and deputy president of NUI Galway, and the Knight of Glin, president of the Irish Georgian Society and an expert on Irish art, will serve of a term of five years. They replace outgoing board members Joe Barry and Tadhg Ó hÉalaithe.
Meanwhile, Poetry Ireland has five new board members: poet and barrister John O'Donnell; Barry O'Brien, of the Royal College of Surgeons; Ruth Webster, of Books Upstairs; poet and journalist Gerard Smyth; and Irish-language poet Colette Nic Aodha. Des Geraghty is now chairman, replacing Frank Down of Bewley's Hotels.
PR guru-about-town Nik Quaife is expanding his career into the role of media mogul. He announced this week that "in this ever-decreasing world of circles" his company has taken on the publishing of Irish Theatre Magazine (ITM).
ITM chair Ciarán Walsh welcomed Quaife's "wide range of production and publicity skills". While editor-in-chief Karen Fricker is in Canada the September 14th issue will be guest-edited by Ophelia Byrne.
More than 40 teenagers from Wexford's Bui Bolg youth group have been busy devising, rehearsing and preparing for this afternoon's (4 p.m.) production, Dig 'n' Deep, in Selskar Abbey, as part of next week's National Heritage Week. Community artist Lucy Medlycott, a co-founder of Bui Bolg, describes the production as of history and "what if?", with a dollop of Irish folklore and Bui Bolg madness.
"Fishamble's dynamic series of courses has had an ongoing, energising impact in developing new writers for the Irish stage, and has expanded the imaginative horizons of what could and should be possible in the theatre," says Vallejo Gantner, director of Dublin Fringe Festival, as quoted by Fishamble. This autumn, Fishamble isoffering two playwriting courses: a nine-week evening course (Wednesdays, October 6th to December 2nd) and a weekend intensive course (October 23rd to 25th). Work arising from both courses will be given a workshop and public reading with young actors under the direction of Jim Culleton. Numbers for the courses are limited to 10: evening fee, €270; weekend fee, €180. For information, telephone 01-6704018 or email gavin@fishamble.com