Madam, - Various correspondents have commented on the supposed unhappiness of Kilkenny Arts Festival with its allocation of funding from the Arts Council.
However, reports that the festival is unhappy with its allocation or that the future of the festival is in jeopardy are completely inaccurate. At no stage has our festival been anything other than appreciative of the support we have received from the Arts Council which has seen our grant funding increase over recent years.
An article by Rosita Boland on August 11th, which was cited in correspondence, did state that the festival is "wrestling with tight budgets and financial uncertainty". This is a factual statement of our position. It is a situation shared by many other arts, cultural and indeed commercial organisations. It is not a criticism or complaint regarding the Arts Council.
While we received €300,000 in funding from the Arts Council towards the cost of staging this year's festival, the total budget for the event is multiples of that sum.
Anyone living in the real world will realise that in the current financial environment, raising additional funds from ticket sales, fund-raising and sponsorship is difficult. Of course we would welcome more money from the Arts Council (or anywhere else) but this does not make us ungrateful or unhappy with what we receive.
In his letter of August 15th, Rev Robert McCarthy asks facetiously if the increased grant funding from the Arts Council from the levels enjoyed during the time of his involvement with the event has been spent on administration.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The increased allocation has been used to increase and develop the breadth of events on offer and attract ever greater numbers of people. Any visitor to Kilkenny in August for the festival would accept that, as our funding has grown, so has the impact of the event. All this has been achieved with two full-time employees. For Rev McCarthy to highlight in isolation the fact that a particular venue is not in use for music every evening of the festival is to ignore the fact that over the years Kilkenny Arts Festival has grown to a position where it now features events across all art forms for all ages and tastes in literally dozens of venues for 10 days. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN PURCELL,
Chairman,
Kilkenny Arts Festival,
High Street,
Kilkenny.