`Letterkenny has never been . . . Has never seemed . . ." "It's always been really ugly." Relief all round. Shaun Hannigan, director of the Letterkenny Arts Centre and native of nearby Gweedore, calls a spade an ugly spade. He adds, however: "It's always been really lively, though. When I was in college in Galway in the late 1970s, Letterkenny was livelier."
Then why is it so ugly? Why is so much of Donegal's built environment so ugly?
"They don't believe it's theirs, in a way. Then there's lots of land, lots of open space. Concern for the landscape and the environment? That's been for the English. For other people."
Until recently, it seemed much of Donegal thought the arts, too, were "for other people". In 1995, the Arts Council designated Co Donegal as one of the priority zones for arts activity in the country. But for about five years, at a steadily accelerating pace, the situation has been changing.
Hannigan says that the growth is without parallel anywhere in the country and guesses that the amount spent by the Arts Council in the county this year was twice what it was last year. The Earagail Arts Festival, which is now in its second week at venues all over the north of the county, has grown by a factor of five in three years.
Donegal County Council arts officer, Traolach O Fionnain, doesn't believe economic resurgence has led to the arts explosion: "The textile industry is in decline and there's nothing replacing it." The arts have had their own economy, he says, explaining that from 1995 or 1996, sources of funding became available: "Udaras na Gaeltachta, Leader projects, EU stuff, cross-border stuff."
It used to be that the Earagail Arts Festival was "hiring church halls", adds the county librarian, Liam Ronayne, but an array of venues has opened: Ionad Cois Locha, the music venue in Dunlewey (1990), the Letterkenny Arts Centre (1996), the Workhouse in Dunfanaghy (1994), down to An Grianan Theatre itself, which opened late last year, where we sit sipping cappuccino as if we were reared on it.
Indeed, you wouldn't even have to check out the arts scene to see there is change afoot in Letterkenny. In a town whose trendiest night spot boasts the name The Golden Grill, the cappuccino is now fully ensconced, along with its friends, the latte and the smoothie. The "little restaurants up the town" have opened up in the last two to three years, says O Fionnain, and though you couldn't prove the arts growth led to this economic activity, it must have helped.
If you need convincing, just look at Galway. The heads behind the 12-year-old Earagail Arts Festival - a loose association of 16 apostles, with Angela Mc Laughlin taking the title, "festival manager" - respond carefully to mention of the "G" word, however and vow to stay true to the character of Donegal: "There isn't an arts audience here," says Hannigan. "You just have to engage the audience."
The festival mirrors the region's character as one of Europe's most populated rural areas, grouped around a mountain. Says O Fionnain, a native of Co Clare, who kickstarted the festival when he took up his job 12 years ago: "It had to have a focus, and it had to be dispersed. It's obvious what the focus of Donegal is - it's Errigle. The poet Cathal O Searcaigh calls it `Donegal's Fujiyama'."
What this means in practice is that you can't have that quintessential festival experience of guzzling culture, then guzzling wine - there are long pauses in between as you drive, for drive you must, through the wild, wonderful countryside: "When I came back here from Southampton, I thought I was in America," confides Hannigan. "The driving. Some people have a TV and video in every room. The big houses."
But why does the festival activity stop abruptly at Barnesmore Gap, leaving south Donegal out in the cold? "That's hard to put a handle on," says O Fionnain. "It's kind of a sensitive one. There's an arts and culture forum in association with the Donegal County Development Board, but the majority of arts groups come from north Donegal." However, as part of the multi-annual funding plan he has with the Arts Council, he is investigating setting up a new festival, perhaps along Donegal Bay, from Bundoran to Glencolmbkille.
He makes the point again and again that the festival is building on arts activity which already exists. While it seemed that there was little awareness of the arts in Donegal when he arrived 12 years ago, all over the place, people were beavering away at their own projects - Balor Theatre was training actors in Ballybofey and Killybegs had a hugely active writers' group.
He distinguishes the work he does with the festival from that which would happen anyway as art "with a twist in it" - art which confronts and confounds expectations, rather than confirming them.
He can't help throwing into relief, however, the fact that there is official culture and unofficial culture, which doesn't get grants and media attention and often isn't deemed to be art. Sometimes quality distinguishes them from each other, but sometimes it doesn't.
Mohan's 100-year-old fun-fair at the oldstyle seaside resort of Rathmullan, with its rifle range, candy-floss and attraction called Live to Ride, which sent a line of little girls squealing into the summer air, runs on the tuppences collected at the gate. Moored at the pier, the good ship Azart which has been sailing the seas of Europe for the last six years, is funded by the "Royal Dutch Prince Bernard Foundation" and more funds are canvassed for through a weekly TV "docusoap" in the Netherlands - which is astonishing, because the Azart crew, viewed from a cold, wooden seat facing the sea last weekend, exhibited no acting ability whatsoever.
The ship takes its inspiration from the medieval image of the "Ship of Fools", a "carnavalesque tradition of the world upside-down". Troubadours and travelling entertainers survived by pure skill, however, and it was that which provided a commentary on the society from which they were excluded, not a lifestyle choice to live on the road, or even on the sea.
The cast attempted to poke fun at the colonial figureheads of European history, with the aid of costumes and props made from "recycled materials" - is that a crinoline, I wonder, or is it a pink lamp-shade? - but their absolute lack of technique defeated them at every turn. The high point was one audience member's mobile phone conversation, the low point my partner's whispered threats "You owe me - big time." And that was before Cleopatra's maid landed in his lap.
Other weekend attractions included the Luminarium at Letterkenny Town Park, a series of plastic chambers lit up by light toured by a group from Britain called Architects of Air. As I took off my shoes at the entrance and passed through the chambers, I was struck by the resemblances the structure bore to a mosque - first there is a forest of columns, then a moment of illumination in an open dome, which is marked with jewel-coloured Islamic-style motifs.
Adults sprawled on the warm plastic, children slid down the columns; one of the attendants described the atmosphere as "bonkers - they think it's a bouncy castle", but no one can doubt the enthusiasm of Donegal's response: "It's a lawless place," comments Hannigan, with no small measure of pride.
The explosion of outdoor spectacle in this country was evident, too. O Fionnain says he's "doing what the visual artists have done for years" and responding to the landscape. But there's also the example of Macnas, which goes back to the example of the Catalan group, Els Comediants, who came to Galway in 1985: "That was huge, huge," says O Fionnain. "I saw it and Shaun was one of the Comediants's minders." Next weekend, another Catalan group, Gog I Magog, will present a Carnival Parade in Letterkenny, with the Inishowen Carnival Group, Sligo's Bacchanal and the Saol Beo Latin Percussion troupe.
Turbo Zone's Cinderella, at Carrickfinn Airport, was last weekend's outdoor highlight, an acrobatic, pyrotechnic, Heavy Metal version of the traditional story. The isolated airport was heaving from soon after 9 p.m. with both adults and children, chips, coke and excitement, but we waited and waited as the tenacious north-western sun slipped beneath the Atlantic, and it was dark enough for the show to go on. Though stunningly costumed and designed, the message of the show by this British group, reinforced by scenes of Vietnam bombers on two screens, is disappointingly simple: "Where have all the flowers gone?", etc. It seemed retrogressive that the ugly sisters - who must have perfected their terrifying snarls by spending long hours at the zoo - were punk-ish and the Prince and Cinderella were New Romantics. The acrobatics were brilliantly harrowing, however, against the wild night sky and when Cinderella ascended with her Prince, there was a roar from the crowd.
Both festival and festival-goers are learning to be daring. Last year, encouraged by extra money from the Millennium Festivals (which helped them this year too), Earagail commissioned a British outfit called Walk the Plank to erect a "Tower of Light" on Tory Island and then in Rathmullan: "Boat upon boat came out, there wasn't a bed to be had on the island," remembers O Fionnain. "There were 10,000 at both shows in Rathmullan." Earagail Arts Festival is now that rare thing, a festival which has established itself but is still run by a group of talented friends who are utterly possessed. Probably it will soon be too big for them, but for the moment they don't care what it takes. Says O Fionnain: "When you get bigger, the risks are bigger - but the payback is much bigger too."
The Earagail Arts Festival runs until Sunday. Highlights include Spanish giant puppet-making with Ventura & Hosta this week at An Grianan, Letterkenny; Poet Cathal O Searcaigh with musicians Paddy Glackin, Micheal O Domhnaill, Sean Garvey and poet Michael Longley at Ionad Cois Locha, Dunlewey (Wednesday, 8.30 p.m.); Catalan group Gog I Magog at Rathmullan Pier (Wednesday 10.30 p.m.) and in the car-park of Halla Naomh Fhionnain, Falcarragh (Sunday, 10.30 p.m.); the Catalan dance group, Zahories at An Grianan, (Saturday and Sunday, 8 p.m.) parades with Gog I Magog and local groups in Letterkenny (Saturday, 3 p.m.) and Falcarragh (Sunday, 9 p.m.). For information, phone 074-29186
