Bureaucracy and the arts

Madam, - Could your Editorial writer of May 31st not find a more fitting vocabulary for discussing the arts than the bureaucratic…

Madam, - Could your Editorial writer of May 31st not find a more fitting vocabulary for discussing the arts than the bureaucratic jargon of "sectors" and "clients" and "integrated plans"? For one thing, the arts do not comprise a "sector" of any kind. This abstraction is borrowed from the dreary boardrooms of the IFSC and AIB, and conjures up nightmares of pie-charts and laptop presentations of "proactive initiatives" and "audience development".

The arts provide food for the soul of this country. Souls don't have "sectors". Benefactors have recognised this in other ages. The only hope for the arts in a so-called "free-market economy" is to subvert the system in the ways artists always have: take what we can get and continue, in the words of George Garrett, to live a full, rich fantasy life.

Anyway (to adapt H.L. Mencken's dictum about your own estimable enterprise, dear editor), a free market is free only to those who own one. And good luck to the good ship Arts Council, and all who avail of her. Ars Gratia Artis, and all that. - Yours, etc.,

JAMES J. McAULEY, Ballyknockan, Co Wicklow.