Madam, - At the end of his analysis of the plans for the Abbey Theatre ( August 16th) Fintan O'Toole calls for the establishment of "a public commission to tease out what a national theatre should be in the Ireland of the 21st century, what such a theatre costs to run and how it should be funded".
A great idea; but it's not just the role of the Abbey that is called into question by the new century. Why not a public commission about the role of regional arts centres? And traditional music? How about "teasing out" whether or not we are happy with the quality of teaching of the arts in our schools, and the level of creative opportunities in our communities, and how much our sense of cultural identity has changed in the last eighty years, and why in 2005 the arts are still seen by the majority as the plaything of a select few?
The Labour Party will shortly be publishing a policy document on culture and the arts - "art4all" - one of whose key components is the setting up of a year-long "cultural inquiry" during the first year of a new government. This inquiry will be a public investigation of every aspect of our culture, from the roles of our national cultural institutions, to how we represent ourselves on film, to the place of "DJ-ing" in the new Ireland.
It will take the form of an investigative commission looking at the state of our cultural infrastructure and at what happens in other countries, while at the same time providing a public forum for people to say how they want the representation of this new Ireland to be achieved.
The country Yeats and Lady Gregory were helping to imagine is totally different from the one in which we now live. We need to establish how and to what degree we can best support the culture of this new place, and it is vital that those who provide that support - the public - are part of that conversation. - Yours, etc,
JACK WALL TD, Labour Spokesperson on Arts, Leinster House, Dublin 2.