Will political devolution in the North, bring about cultural devolution? On the face of it, the establishment of a new Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure should herald positive developments. After all, local ministers ought to know a lot more about local arts and culture than London's political appointees, oughtn't they? Well, yes. They ought to. But don't hold your breath.
There was the curious sight of unionist and nationalist parties visiting the Arts Council headquarters in Belfast in recent months - an exercise in getting to know you and getting to know what the council actually does. The process was continued on Monday night in Belfast when the political parties held a session in the Lyric theatre to talk about the arts.
It's a novel experience for Northern political parties to have to exercise their thoughts on the matter of the arts. The difficult task of trying to fund, support and develop the arts will fall to the new department which will work in conjunction with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
The council has already voiced its hope that it will retain a certain independence from Stormont. It has indicated a desire to co-operate with the North's newly elected culture vultures but has emphasised the collective body of experience which the council already possesses and its preference to fund work on artistic merits and not just on political expediency.
Will their request be listened to? Probably not. For, like so many areas, the arts will be subjected to scrutiny on the basis of "parity of esteem". If the Falls gets a handout for its festival, then the Shankill deserves similar. If the Irish language is funded, then so should the Ulster-Scots. The council will, without doubt, find itself coming under increasing pressure to move away from its traditional funding roles to one which gives more money to community-based enterprises - community-based enterprises favoured by politicians.
That the Arts Council of Northern Ireland will be subjected to closer scrutiny is no bad thing in itself. The council is a curious mix of old-fashioned understanding of the fine arts combined with contemporary political canniness. The politicians' wish to divert money from an elite (as they perceive it) to their voters is entirely understandable. But the mere diversion of funds in itself will not be enough to ensure that art or artists will be the real winner.
Essentially, political parties do not see the arts as expressions of creativity but rather as expressions of community identity. And subsidising the community's understanding of itself is what politicians do best. Belfast provides a good example of how the arts are viewed and the way in which they might develop. The West Belfast Festival, for example, regularly boasts of the contribution it makes to its community. Murals, music and debates are at its heart. Year after year, the message is driven home that the festival is the cultural expression of the people of West Belfast, that it is that community's Zeitgest.
However, the festival has continually failed to recognise the very considerable artistic merit of people from geographical west Belfast. Political figures are recognised in the naming of competitions and lectures. And the organisers have every right to do this. Yet figures such as the novelist Michael McLaverty, the playwright, Joseph Tomelty and the artist Gerard Dillon aren't. All were from the west of the city. They belonged to a different era, a different "people" it seems.
Shamefully, all were treated as being "not quite the right thing" by an indifferent arts establishment which sniffed at the very thought of working-class artists - and Fenian working-class artists to boot - having anything of value to say.
The Belfast Festival at Queen's is the other side of the coin - for too long a little corner of Ireland that was forever middle England. While the west revels in its inverted "cultural cringe", the south of the city attempts to project an image of a normal, stable, provincial capital. The festival revolves around an imaginary city where, really and truly, people drink G and Ts and just love the ballet, darling. Marvellous stuff.
(Like Feile an Phobail, there is no chance that Tomelty and the novelist Sam Hanna Bell will be found at this party.) This is not simply to make an argument for tokenism on both sides: a West Belfast Festival with Shakespeare and a Queen's Festival with a few "native" writers. (Indeed, in these days of reluctant consensus, does Belfast need two festivals?) What is needed is to recast the underlying assumptions which are made about art and artists by political movements and artistic establishments. Somewhere among all the wheeling and dealing, there will have to be a recognition that artists acknowledge, cultivate and express the creative impulse - and that they do it out of aesthetic necessity.
But the danger remains that bowing to political expediency rather than acknowledging artistic integrity will win out. Take poetry, for example. One supporter of the West Belfast Festival once dismissed the idea of poetry as representing anything more than a "literary soiree". It's a strange thought and one which betrays both the commentator's colonial dependence on the university's interpretation of literature and his ignorance of Irish poetry. Irish poetry as a soiree. Really? Would that be, say, Sean O Riordain being shunted between Cork City Hall to TB sanatorium and only discovering his true humanity in the creative act? Or Mairtin O Direain working in the Civil Service and composing by night. Or Patrick Kavanagh swimming against a tide of prejudice.
Soiree? If only they had it so good.
The concern that poetry, literature and the visual arts should be part and parcel of the everyday fabric of people's lives is a vital one. This is no bourgeois fantasy. Rather it is the recognition that the creative impulse resides in the working class just as much as it does in the university and that the function of festivals - whether they invoke community or city - should be to recognise and value those who are marginalised figures but are not marginal interests. Where will the likes of, say, Robert Lynd, Protestant, republican, Irish speaker and essayist for the New Statesman find a place in the Northern sun? Let's hope someone reminds the politicians that these are the people that matter.
