Art ScapeAlthough the directors of the company organising Cork's term as European Capital of Culture 2005 are holding tight about programme details - for the time being at any rate - they are responding more vigorously to queries about budget management and staffing levels, writes Mary Leland.
Director of communications Shane Malone has confirmed that the company is aiming at a staff of 25 to 30 people by the time the year begins, and says that approximately 70 per cent of the budget of €13 million is to go on programme funding, with 30 per cent for salaries, expenses and overheads.
Two new appointments have been announced: Des Baker, former director of Derry's Science and Innovation Festival and manager of the visitors' centre at Edinburgh's Royal Observatory, and Valerie Byrne, previously visual arts co-ordinator at St James's Hospital, Dublin, join the the current full-time staff of 14 as producers.
Three more positions in the marketing, sponsorship and press areas will be advertised before Christmas.
What is still a little limp, however, is the level of local commercial support. The success of the year depends on a budget considerably greater than that now available.
The 2005 organisation is determined to have the €13 million recognised as a levering budget, money to generate money, as well as to support a year-long programme of events. The organisation needs to attract the interest and energy of local and national bodies, and word on the street is that assistant director Tom McCarthy is an invaluable evangelist. He will need to be: budgets of €73 million in Lille and €65 million in Graz put Cork's pot into a disquieting perspective, although Malone says the funding base is already expanding.
While the rest of the team is taken up with evaluating 2,000 responses to an invitation for ideas, the deadline for which passed in September, deputy director Mary McCarthy is commissioning international material from European practitioners and institutions. It is expected that this strand will make up 40 per cent of the eventual programme, with 60 per cent coming as a result of the public call.
Taxing wait nearly over
With Budget day on Wednesday next, most interest in the arts is now focused on Section 481 - tax relief for film investment - and whether the Minister for Finance has been convinced of the need for its retention by the campaign mounted in recent months by some of our film-industry heavyweights.
The Minister for the Arts, John O'Donoghue, gave little away when he opened the new UGC 17-cinema complex in Dublin during the week. Saying that the industry would have to wait for Budget day to hear news of its future, he also made clear that he had ensured that Charlie McCreevy "fully understands" his perspective.
Those present were no doubt happy about the supportive nature of that perspective. O'Donoghue said "we should not let details, such as numbers employed or net incoming investment generated or other economic indicators, obscure the fact that the original and best reason for government supporting film-making in Ireland is that it is artistically and culturally worthwhile". Sound reasoning, and hopefully the Department of Finance will get the message. Meanwhile, it is expected that O'Donoghue will be turning his attention to another contentious matter next week when he announces membership of the Standing Committee on the Traditional Art.
The Minister will appoint a chairperson from among Arts Council members and it is thought that he will opt for someone who will be perceived as being "neutral" on the issues to be addressed.
Apart from the chairperson, the others on the committee do not have to be on the Arts Council. It will be interesting to see how the the deeply-held - but opposing - viewpoints on what needs to be done for the sector will be represented.
Rosas and Morris dancers
The internationally acclaimed Mark Morris Dance Group, from the US, will take part in the second International Dance Festival Ireland next year. The week-long event, which opens on May 4th, at the Abbey theatre, will include other international companies, such as Rosas (Belgium), which will complete the Abbey's dance week with a work entitled Rain. Under the direction of one of the world's major contemporary choreographers, Anna Theresa de Keersmaeker, the company has, over the past 20 years, made a huge impact on the contemporary dance scene. Rosas will perform at the Abbey on Friday, May 7th and Saturday, May 8th at 8 p.m.
The Mark Morris Dance Group, which opens the festival, has been thrilling audiences worldwide and was a major attraction at the Edinburgh Festival for three years running. The company will perform at the Abbey for two nights (Tuesday, May 4th and Wednesday, May 5th). The full programme will be launched in March. The festival takes place biannually and received €565,000 in Arts Council funding for its inaugural 2002 programme.
Wake for Linenhall CES
The death notices have been drawn up, the funeral arrangements made, and the house is definitely not "private". A wake and removal have been planned for Castlebar, Co Mayo, next Friday and Saturday to mark the death of the Linenhall Arts Centre's FÁS Community Employment Scheme (CES), writes Lorna Siggins.
The ceremonies have been organised by the arts centre in response to what it describes as the "massive expression of public and artistic support" it has received since the CES, employing 15 people, was cut.
"We are still in a state of shock here at the Linenhall," says its director, Marie Farrell. "There was no forewarning that our award-winning CES was going to disappear overnight."
To keep the centre open, the level of arts programming will have to be reduced, Farrell adds, and the cut is a "serious challenge" to the centre's level of activity. Already, it has been forced to cancel its successful children's arts festival, Roola Boola, due to reduced Arts Council funding.
Linenhall says that its CES received commendations over the past six years, and won the FÁS regional award for excellence last year. As a "creative response" to the centre's difficulties, Farrell is inviting any and all who wish to express their support to join in celebrating the success of the scheme and mourn its passing in a "fun and positive way".
The programme starts on Friday next when the wake will take place in the Linenhall coffee shop, and there will be a book of support to sign. A public procession will take place on Saturday, December 6th, starting at 1.30 p.m. at the Linenhall and ending up in Castlebar's Main Street at 2 p.m.
Flann's Romanian twist
Flann O'Brien is a popular author with eastern European publishers and readers. In recent years his work has appeared in translation in Czech, Hungarian, and Lithuanian, as well as Latvian. Now the book that most critics regard as his greatest, At Swim-Two-Birds, is being translated into Romanian, his first novel to appear in that language.
Ireland Literature Exchange (ILE), the agency responsible for the promotion of Irish literature in translation, has announced that Romanian translator Dr Adrian Otoiu is the organisation's first recipient of the annual ILE Bursary in Literary Translation.
As ILE's guest, Dr Otoiu has just spent a month in Dublin to enable him to add the finishing touches to his translation. There is no doubt that getting a sense of the city, which the Tyrone-born author and Irish Times columnist adopted as his own, will assist Dr Otoiu in his task of understanding and capturing O'Brienisms in At Swim.
According to Sinéad Mac Aodha, recently appointed director of ILE, Dr Otoiu "has even managed to retain the rhythm and rhyme of O'Brien's much-loved 'pint of plain' verse in his Romanian translation".
Dr Otoiu is a novelist, academic and literary critic. He received the Best Book of the Year award from the Association for Professional Writers of Romania in 1996 for his novel, The Skin of the Matter (or Dancing with the Flayed). He is an associate professor in English literature at the North University in Baia Mare.
Opening with a bang
Crash Ensemble opens its second new music festival at the Project Arts Centre on Wednesday with a programme that includes Bang On A Can member Michael Gordon's video opera, Van Gogh, writes Michael Dervan. Gordon will be at the performance, and will take part in a pre-performance conversation with Crash artistic director Donnacha Dennehy under the provocative title, 'Who Cares if You Listen?'. Two other Bang On A Can members, double bass player Robert Black and pianist Lisa Moore will also perform in the festival, and both will take part in pre-concert discussions. The festival finale on Saturday will see the Callino String Quartet give the Dublin première of Steve Reich's Different Trains, and other visiting ensembles include Canada's Bradyworks and Bozzini Quartet, as well as the dB Ensemble from Belfast. The festival programme features premières of works by Andrew Hamilton, John Godfrey, Keith Acheson, Peter Rosser, Simon Mawhinney, Judith Ring and Donnacha Dennehy, and a new collaboration between Thwaite