While arts practitioners and organisations are still absorbing the impact of the Arts Council's current Arts Plan (1999-2001), the Council and its staff are already looking ahead to the next one. Much of its time over the next few months will be spent formulating policy for the next three years - assuming, that is, that it will still be the Arts Council rather than the Department of Arts and Heritage which will be responsible for policy-making. Before that can happen, the current plan has to be evaluated, and this, since 1999, has been an issue of concern to everyone in the arts community. The current plan, which was fully funded by Government, outlined an ambitious new approach to arts planning and policy making, redefining the Arts Council as a development agency for the arts. It set out broad objectives for the arts sector as a whole, rather than individual goals for the separate artistic disciplines. During the past three years the Council also moved from making annual funding awards to multi-annual funding. The impact of this has yet to be formally assessed.
The Council is now reviewing The Arts Plan 1999-2001 and seeks submissions from individuals and organisations. Disappointingly, due to the foot-and-mouth crisis the - extremely lively - consultation meetings that were held around the country in 1988 to review the first Arts Plan have not taken place. Instead the Council has set up a discussion forum site on the Internet. The website includes discussion papers, and an introduction to the review process and anyone who is interested can post a message on it giving their views of the successes and failures of the Council's strategies for developing the arts.
The review of the plan is being facilitated by Prof Anthony Everitt, author of The Creative Imperative - a report on sup- port for the individual artist in Ireland. The address is: http://www.artscouncil.ie/ artsplan/artsplanreview. E-mail can be sent to evaluation@artscouncil.ie. Traditional written communication is also possible to Prof Everitt at: Evaluation, Arts Council, 70 Merrion Square, Dublin 2. The deadline for submissions is May 18th.
