British Council looks North

ArtScape: The three members of staff at the Irish offices of the British Council were due to be served with redundancy notices yesterday, and will be gone by the end of April.

Is this the end of the council's wide-ranging and well-regarded Irish operation, or at least the end of its many bilateral projects and partnerships, which involved bringing some of the best of British art - and indeed science - to the Republic?

The new focus is on North-South projects. "In effect the British Council is running down its Dublin office and beefing up its Belfast operation", according to Colm Quinlan, regional officer with Amicus trade union, which represents the council's staff.

The British Council worldwide is undergoing change and, as reported in this newspaper last week, is shifting resources from Europe to other areas, specifically Asia and Africa.

In a two-page letter this week to "key contacts", director Tony Reilly set the changes in the context of a changing world. One section states that "in an increasingly sophisticated and interconnected Europe, some of the British Council's more traditional information and cultural relations institute functions may no longer be as relevant, or as appropriate, as they once were". Later, Reilly writes, "Regrettably, it will mean the discontinuation of some of our more traditional bilateral activities in the arts, science and society".

Does this mean there will no longer be such council-sponsored bilateral arts events in the Republic as the Irish premiere of dance company DV8, the NoFit State Circus tour, or the current Chris Wood music tour?

A council spokesman quoted in this newspaper last week said that the Dublin office will remain open but with a slightly smaller staff. But on Wednesday, March 21st, the council informed its staff of three (arts manager, science manager and communications officer) that their jobs were being abolished, that they were being made redundant and that they could consider applying for three new positions: the director's job, a finance/ administration post that is currently vacant, and a Belfast-based projects manager. Reilly's term as director finished last year and he is due to move anyway, though until now the director has been appointed from London. All of this is according to Quinlan, as members of staff have been asked not to deal with the media but refer any inquiries to the director.

"There has been mistrust and bad feeling for a long time at the Dublin office," says Quinlan. The redundancy terms on offer - in effect, compulsory redundancy, says Quinlan - are capped at €3,600 per year of service, "which is not a good severance package in this day and age for an organisation that is not going broke". The union has responded that compulsory redundancy is not acceptable, and that if there are cutbacks, positions should be made available to existing Irish staff before they consider voluntary redundancy. Staff members are willing to ballot for industrial action, including a strike, Quinlan says.

The prospect of a ballot outside the council offices in Dublin would certainly be embarrassing. Ironically, all this is happening just weeks after the President, Mary McAleese, gave the fourth British Council Annual Lecture on multiculturalism and migration in London, the first head of state and non-Briton to do so.

Aside from the clumsy way change has been handled, wouldn't it a rotten dividend of the peace process if a new North-South focus meant that the excellent Britain-Ireland projects that the council has been involved with for years came to an end.

Sound vision for Drogheda

The programme of the third Drogheda Arts Festival, which is launched tomorrow, will show a shift of focus from newly commissioned theatre to contemporary music and visual arts. The festival will incorporate a mini-festival, Spirals of Ragtime and Raga, celebrating the work of renowned American minimalist composer Terry Riley, who makes his Irish debut in Drogheda on May 4th and 6th alongside the Arte Quartett from Switzerland and Ireland's Crash Ensemble. The Riley-fest is presented by Louth Contemporary Music Society, which has also commissioned Arvo Pärt to compose a new choral composition based on St Patrick's Breastplate, planned for February 2008.

The visual arts strand, curated by Ruairi O'Cuiv, includes Resonance at Droichead Arts Centre, exploring art in which music/sound is integral to meaning or interpretation. The new Highlanes Gallery hosts inter-changes, with work by 20 Irish artists who have won Fulbright Scholarships to work in the US, while a photographic exhibition, Double Vision, is a collaboration between French photographer Klavdij Sluban and young offenders from St Patrick's Institution.

Other events include music from Frankie Gavin and Hibernian Rhapsody, the Angelo Debarre Quartet, dance troupe Junk Ensemble's Watch Her Rain and ballet from Monica Loughman and Robert Gabdullin, while, in theatre, Calipo and Upstate Theatre Project present The Shape of Things to Come.

The town's borough council, unusually, is the producer of the festival and its arts officer, Rosemary Collier, has programmed the event, which the council sees as bringing a "festival with a civic agenda" to Drogheda, as well as promoting excellence in contemporary art and providing access to the programme.

Cork City Council this week decided to restore Christchurch, adjacent to Triskel Arts Centre, as a cultural venue which will be integrated into Triskel's existing facilities, at an initial cost of €2 million. The council will pay for the refurbishment, to be completed in summer 2008, and Triskel will manage the venue. Triskel artistic director Tony Sheehan said the move would have "a profound effect" on Triskel and on the city. "It opens up huge programming possibilities to Triskel as it enters its 30th year of operation in 2008".

The church, built in 1726, housed the Cork City Archives until they were moved to Blackpool in 2005. In his report, city manager Joe Gavin said Christchurch would also be further integrated into the adjoining Bishop Lucey Park.

Well, his career in the film business was shortlived: Fergal McGrath, former managing director of Druid (who left the theatre company in January to move to Magma Films), started working this month as manager of the Town Hall Theatre in Galway. He takes over from Michael Diskin, who has left the Town Hall after 12 years to become chief executive of the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. McGrath will programme the three performance spaces for the city council's municipal theatre: the Town Hall main stage and studio, and the Black Box nearby.

Pan Pan's Gavin Quinn was this week awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York. Ten grants of $25,000 (€18,750) were awarded to artists in the US and abroad, selected by the foundation's directors and members of the arts community from confidential nominations by artists and arts professionals. The award comes on the heels of good reviews for Quinn's English Touring Opera production of The Seraglio at the Hackney Empire in London. The London Independent wrote: "Quinn mines the comedy in a TV-sitcom manner: the jokes come thick and fast, with much little-and-large slapstick . . . Politically updated Mozart can be wearisome: this delightful production shows exactly how to do it". The Stage, meanwhile, called the show "a memorably entertaining experience"

Stephen Roe, of ROEWU Architecture, has been awarded the Kevin Kieran Award to develop a research project over two years, valued at €50,000. After this, he'll design a building for the OPW. His research project, Ailtreacht, I gceann na haimsire (Architecture, immersed in the weather) will investigate design strategies that successfully embody different material responses to the Irish weather, from the vernacular tectonics of the Irish dry-stone wall in the wind to volumes of light in the modernist churches of Liam McCormick. The result will be a publication that acts as a strategic framework for building in and with the unique Irish climate.

Roe grew up in Mullingar and studied architecture at DIT Bolton Street and Columbia University, New York. He is now based in London and working on building projects in Ireland, the UK and Taiwan.