ARTSCAPE:CORK IS ON a rescue drive this week, first of all getting involved in the National Campaign for the Arts (in response to the McCarthy Report recommendations) and, secondly, conducting a Facebook call to prevent the imminent closure of the Kino arthouse cinema in the city, writes MARY LEYLAND
William Galinsky, of the Cork Midsummer Festival, says that there are now more than 1,600 people on Facebook willing to contribute to a fund to save the cinema, and a meeting is to take place at Kino today at 2pm to consider the financial, taxation and legal methods by which this goodwill could be harnessed. Galinsky envisages a structure with an annual membership subscription, giving patrons a sense of ownership and encouraging them to attend more regularly and to take on a cultural responsibility.
“I want to do something about this because Kino matters to the city and, personally, my life would be a lot poorer without it,” he says. “And I felt this ending was so unfortunate. Mick Hannigan is someone who really cares about film and took Kino on at personal risk. Also, I have the feeling that people have more time for their cultural life and are ready to take responsibility for it.”
Something of that same sense of responsibility was evident at a meeting of arts practitioners of all kinds in the Everyman Palace Theatre on Thursday. Initially an information-sharing exercise, this gathering is to be followed by more focused groupings aimed specifically at decision-makers, such as councillors and Dáil deputies. Co-organiser Julie Kelleher, of Meridian Theatre Company, admits that “nothing was happening in Cork” until a phone call from Tania Banotti, of Theatre Forum, acted as a spur for her, Eoin Ó hAnnracháin (Clinic Productions) and Sarah Dee (Everyman Palace Theatre). One of their objectives was the creation of a voter database.
In the meantime, the Everyman Palace has already adopted the Take Your Seat initiative, backed by the Arts Council and designed to encourage customers to make greater use of cultural venues throughout the country. Patrons who book through the takeyourseat.ie website will be offered incentives to return for another show and Everyman Palace general manager Eimear O'Herlihy says the scheme has already united more than 30 venues in a national collaboration aimed at beating the recession. The Everyman Palace is offering everyone who registers with takeyourseat.ie for its next show, Anne Frank and Me(November 9th to 14th), two tickets for the price of one for The Beauty Queen of Leenane, which opens next February.
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Credit where credit is due: the Galway arts sector, which is supporting the National Campaign for the Arts in its opposition to proposed Bord Snip Nua cuts, is delighted that Galway City Council is maintaining grant levels to arts organisations for this year, writes LORNA SIGGINS.
More than 80 arts groups have received grants totalling €415,000, an increase of €45,000 on last year’s figure. The grant to Galway Arts Festival, one of the major beneficiaries, is €68,000, an increase of €20,000 on 2008.
By contrast, Galway County Council has cut its overall arts allocations by 50 per cent.
“We are very heartened that Galway City Council has maintained its commitment,” says Town Hall Theatre manager Fergal McGrath, one of the co-ordinators of the Galway arts campaign. “We’re keenly supportive of the four main aims of the national campaign, given the importance of Culture Ireland to groups like Druid Theatre performing abroad, and the impact that abolition of the Irish Film Board would have on film activity in the west.
“Big decisions on funding taken at national level can have an even bigger trickledown effect in a city like this, where the arts are an integral part of socio-economic activity.”
More than 30 arts organisations are supporting Galway’s campaign to retain arts funding, with a number of events planned for the coming weeks.
Co Mayo has also rallied to the cause, with about 100 artists and “art workers” attending a spirited recent meeting in the Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar. Some 128 artists to date have signed up for the collective effort to ensure that the arts are part of the economic revival, according to Linenhall director Marie Farrell.
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More good news from Galway is that storyteller Clare Muireann Murphy has been booked for London’s Barbican Theatre. Murphy, who has been performing as part of the Baboró international children’s festival this week, has also been invited to Norway and is due to play in Chicago and Denver in November, and London again next spring.
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A National Gallery symposium, called Audience Development in Museums and Cultural Sites in Difficult Times, takes place this Thursday, November 5th. It includes speakers Anna Cutler (Tate Modern), Steven Hadley (Audiences Northern Ireland), Lia Ghilardi (Noema Research and Planning), Damian O’Brien (Fáilte Ireland), Ross Parry (University of Leicester) and Stuart McLoughlin (Business to Arts), and is chaired by Myles Dungan, Una Carmody and Doireann Ni Bhriain. Events include six case histories from Irish cultural sites.
Fee for the day is €60 (concessions, €30). For bookings, telephone 01-6633504/05; for further information, see nationalgallery.ie.
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The premiere of Irish composer Anne-Marie O'Farrell's setting for Hoopoe Song, a poem by Seamus Cashman, takes place at Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane, tomorrow at 12 noon. It will be sung by mezzo soprano Aylish E Kerrigan with pianist Dearbhla Collins as accompanist.
Cashman's poem appears in his collection, That Morning Will Come: New and Selected Poems, and is one of a sequence called Secrets, written following a visit to Palestine by the poet.
The composer says: “Both the poem, and the city in which is it situated, have many resonances of the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The poem is a contemplation of the heady mix of religion and religious cultures in Jerusalem, with its traditions, prejudices and divisions. The hoopoe bird, which flies back and forth over the dividing wall and borders, is a symbol of that, which overcomes division.”
Other works in tomorrow's programme include Schoenberg's Das Buch der Haengenden Garten, Seoirse Bodley's A Passionate Love, Tidesby Aloys Fleischmann, and April Awakesby Elaine Agnew. Admission is free.