Sir, - Simply put, the client report form drawn up by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland is intended: (a) to gather information from organisations we fund on the extent of arts provision for and from communities which have been either neglected or actively discriminated against in the past; and (b) to encourage all arts organisations to consider how their own work might be developed explicitly to include such communities.
But Theo Dorgan of Poetry Ireland (August 24th) believes that all that has to be done to redress the long-term effects of such discrimination is to be "cheerful". Peter Sirr of the Irish Writers Centre (August 21st) says he does not "set out to design a specifically lesbian programme or programmes exclusively for men, women or Ulster Scots speakers". Mr Dorgan offers to organise a reading for a female Chinese Irish poet, but only if I can direct him to one. In the meantime, both organisations march on, in their own words "inclusive" and "pluralist", committed to "openness" and "non-exclusivity".
And yet. . .there has been and is discrimination in Ireland, North and South. Your Editorial of August 21st ("The poison of racism") was timely and the Letters page that same day contained a further unsavoury caricature of Travellers. Even your columnist Brendan Glacken (Times Square, August 24th) can snigger with the rest of the lads at "Vedic lesbian Buddhists" and "Talmudic amputee Judaists". It is a very fine thing to be in a majority.
Racism and discrimination exist in the arts just as much as elsewhere. Overcoming the historical neglect of minority communities and their chronic under-representation in the cultural life of Irish society requires positive action to give them the means of cultural production.
Only when that has happened will those cultures ripen as a matter of course into art. It is certainly not enough to sit back and wait for the art works to arrive, only to throw up our arms when they don't and say: "Well, I told you so, there aren't any Chinese Irish [or Ulster Scots or Indian Irish] poets" and then carry on in our cheerful way.
Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 requires the Arts Council to have due regard to the need to promote equal opportunity between persons of different religious belief, political opinion, racial group, age, marital status or sexual orientation, between men and women generally, between persons with a disability and persons without, and between persons with dependants and persons without. In so doing, this model of progressive legislation acknowledges that discrimination rests not only in actual harm done, but also in actual good not done.
By endorsing this model, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland is taking action to redress the effects of discrimination and neglect and it is encouraging its clients to do likewise.
Your readers will be interested to know that the council has received many expressions of support for its policy from representatives of minority communities. - Yours, etc.,
Damian Smyth, Public Affairs Officer, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Malone Road, Belfast 9.