Arts funding not discretionary or a luxury says Minister

Funding of the arts should not be looked at as "discretionary or, even worse, a luxury", the Minister for Arts Heather Humphreys has said.

A five-year legacy project from 2017 to 2022 will put the arts at the "centre of public policy" and will be announced next month, she told the national conference on the Easter Rising in NUI Galway.

She acknowledged the artistic community was still recovering from the cuts of the crisis years and that the Government would have to reconsider the funding of the arts.

She echoed the words of the Taoiseach Enda Kenny, who admitted this week that the State had “frankly” failed to support the arts the way that it should.

Speaking at the conference on Thursday night, Mr Kenny said the "arts are the best of who we are. Our arts were central to the revolutionary generation. The poets and playwrights, the revivalists and the writers, had a vision that was as much about cultural freedom as political independence".

‘Vital’

In response Mrs Humphreys said funding the arts and creativity should be seen as a “vital component of building an open, fairer society”.

She suggested it would be a “huge mistake” if something was not done to seize on the level of cultural engagement surrounding the Easter Rising centenary commemorations.

Speaking at the conference, she stated: "I think official Ireland sat up and took notice, as the arts took centre stage and creativity allowed us to fully explore our cultural heritage. Now the challenge is to keep that momentum going."

The goal of the legacy project will be to facilitate a “vibrant cultural ecosystem with artists and their work at its centre”.

She described it as an “important and exciting project and I look forward to progressing it very shortly”.

The Government had put its trust in the artistic communities and local authorities to mark the commemorations and they had delivered, she said. “The results were as spectacular as they were diverse.”

She told the conference that the Easter Rising commemorations had reclaimed the national flag from the Provisional IRA. She praised the defence forces which delivered tricolours to almost every primary school in the country.

“Our children have learnt of the peaceful message behind the tricolour. This reconnection, this renewed understanding and appreciation of the importance our national symbol was a subtle but vital element of this year’s commemorations.”

No teapots

She also told the conference that this year commemorations had ensured women would not be “left making the tea or playing the harp” as they had been during the commemorations in 1966.

“Women’s history is having a moment. And it’s about time,” she said. “The scholarship around the role of women in 1916 and in the revolutionary generation has been quite remarkable.”

Mrs Humphreys also praised the Waking the Feminists initiative which arose out of the Abbey Theatre programme for the centenary commemorations which had only one play by a female playwright.

It had led to a “vital conversation”, she said, not only about women in the theatre but in the creative arts in general.

She said: “We have made great strides in the area of gender equality in Ireland in the past 100 years. But the moment complacency sets in is the moment we realise that there is still a long way to go.

“It would be a wonderful thing to think that if, to even a very tiny degree, the conversations we’ve had about women in 1916 and about equality and mutual respect, are helping to send a very positive message to young girls and women across this country.”