Art fights back

THE idea that underdevelopment and over centralisation mean the peasant people sitting by the fire playing tunes and telling stories is a truck load of garbage. What they mean is a great silence. Until recently, in places like Achill, Co Mayo, all you could hear were two centuries of the ghostly voices of those who were forced to leave.

If Mayo can fight back with art, it's a sign that the tide of centralisation may be slowly turning. And fighting back it is, due to a phenomenon that's occurring all over "picturesque" rural Ireland: local people are becoming more empowered, and the "blow in" alternative artistic culture is becoming more integrated and influential. And these two groups are now working together.

Achill North West, a development company set up in 1994 by a local group and funded by the Council of Religious Superiors, last year ran an adventurous, ambitious sculpture symposium with the Sculptors' Society of Ireland, which was directed by a local artist recently "blown in" from New York, John Me Hugh, with his Dublin wife, the artist Margaret Morrison. This year, says Me Hugh, Achill North, West is looking for funding to bring artists to Achill to live and work in a village and they are exploring, with IMMA, the possibility of stretching the museum's outreach programme to the old age pensioners' day centre in Keel.

In Ballina, Yew Theatre Company set up by the French director Pierre Campus with his wife, Yvette, who initially went to Mayo to escape from it all - is running a new venue, The Building, with a local group, Ballina Arts Events. Since September, The Building has been running an actors' training course in association with the Gaiety School of Acting, a enterprise which is bound to reseed more theatre in an area once devoid of professional drama.

The regional cities now have arts activity and, nearly always, an arts centre as standard. While much of this is due to the Arts Council's policy on "the regions" of more than a decade's standing, more of it is due to local activity and activism. In rural areas, if locals do not overcome their differences and join their voices to make a very loud noise, they will be faced with silence. All over the country, the silence is being drowned by more and more communities like the two in Mayo, mentioned above.

Development To Watch:

This year might just see the announcement of the founding of Cork RTC's West Cork Campus, with courses run for, and by, west Cork's estimated 200 visual artists.

This year's Must Sees:

1. The Frankie Kennedy Winter School, Dunlewey, Co Donegal: This year's school is taking place as you read this, and if next year's cocktail of classes in traditional instruments and concerts is up to this year's, then plan to see in 1998 under mighty Eargail mountain.

2. West Cork Festival of Chamber Music, Bantry House: What a bold move it was on the part of farmer Francis Humphries to set up this festival. This year's event takes place from June 24th to July 6th and includes the Schubert Octet performed by the English Chilingirian Quartet, the Brahms Sextet performed by the Van Brugh Quartet, with a cellist and violinist from the Chilingirians.

3. Opera Theatre Company's The Magic Flute: Adapted for children, this production will play to about 8,000 people of all ages, from its opening night in Athlone on April 30th until the end of its nationwide tour.

More exciting still is a concurrent schools' programme which will run from many centres, including Dundalk, Monaghan and Ballyshannon.

4. Wexford Opera Festival: I have no idea what Mercadante's Elena Da Feltre, Dargomizhsky's Rusalka and Respighi's La Fiamma are going to be like, but I'm anxious to try them - and that is the spirit of this festival in October November, which gives the narrow streets of Wexford the silk rustling mystery of the Venice carnival, and fills the heart with music.

5. McDonagh Trilogy, Druid Theatre Company, Galway: I'll be heading to Galway in May to see three of the fiery and talented Martin McDonagh's plays performed on successive nights: The Beauty Queen Of Leenane, A Skull In Connemara and The Lonesome West.

6. I'll be looking out for the new Marina Carr play which Garry Hynes has in her arsenal as well.