"I HAD a real sense of the potential of exporting Irish art and culture recently, when there were seven curtain calls for the opening night of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme in Paris. We have a big, exportable asset now." These are the words of Tony O Dalaigh, director of the Dublin Theatre Festival and a member of the committee of L'Imaginaire Irlandais. Like many people involved in the arts in Ireland, he is in favour of the proposed independent agency to promote Irish art abroad, first mooted in the Arts Council's Arts Plan 1995-1997, and further recommended in Challenges and Opportunities Abroad, the White Paper on Foreign Policy produced recently by the Department of Foreign Affairs.
So far the "debate", which the White Paper recommends to get the ball rolling on the proposed agency, has not started between the various bodies concerned the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Cultural Relations Committee (CRC), the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, the Arts Council and An Bord Trachtala. Currently, the major support system for Irish artists wishing to tour outside of Ireland is the CRC an 18 member advisory body appointed by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, with a budget of £510,000 for 1996.
Problems can arise with regard to the smooth functioning of the CRC, however. Earlier this year there was a period of three months during which the old CRC had disbanded and the new CRC had not yet been appointed, resulting in a huge backlog of applications. Although some grants were ,then awarded retrospectively, during the hiatus - period artists and arts organisations whose applications were left pending had to go ahead and make their own arrangements if they wanted to be able to attend the various festivals outside of Ireland to which they had been invited.
Macnas had been asked to take part in a festival in Bogota, Colombia, in March, which was going to involve transporting a container from Galway to Colombia at a cost of £11,000. With no new CRC and the company went ahead with its plans for Colombia: "The festival organisers in Bogota very generously agreed to pay our expenses, whether or not a retrospective grant from the CRC came through," says projects manager, Gary MacMahon. "We did a parade, and six performances of Balor in a venue that seated two and hall thousand people. It was full every night."
LAST year, Macnas toured to San Francisco and Massachusetts (with the help of funds from the CRC and from the American Ireland Fund). In the last 12 months they have been approached by people from at least eight different countries (including Japan) who wanted to invite them to festivals abroad: "We told them how much it would cost and they said we can't afford you. Our transport costs are always very high. Companies from Britain get invited instead, because they have access to funding from the British Council," says MacMahon.
However, "people are always blown away when they see Macnas. It is really good for tourism. We were representing Ireland as well as Irish culture when we went to Bogota. Bringing Irish artists to other countries is a way of attracting both tourists and investors to Ireland." This year Macnas will receive only £4,000 from the CRC.
Adrian Munnelly, director of the Arts Council and a member of the CRC, notes the irony that, while the Arts Council has a budget of close to £20 million to develop the arts in Ireland, the CRC has only half a million to develop Irish art "in the rest of the world": "Irish culture is a hot ticket at the moment. Structures, such as the CRC (set up by de Valera in the 1940s) have not kept pace with the position Irish culture now enjoys internationally - not just in France and Germany, but also in the US, where everyone is talking about Riverdance and Seamus Heaney," he says.
"There is a need for a dedicated agency to co ordinate the efforts of the existing bodies; one which would be able to take advantage of all the expertise that has already been developed here, and take a pro active role in promoting Irish artists." Currently, he notes, both the Arts Council and the CRC are deluged with requests for Irish artists to go abroad.
Lar Cassidy, director of the Ireland and Its Diaspora Festival for the Frankfurt Book Fair in October, adds: "We can't just leave it at one off events like L'Imaginaire Irlandais or the Frankfurt Book Fair. We need a policy driven and structured approach to promoting our culture overseas, and there will be even more of a demand for it as a result of our activities this year in France and Germany."
He would like to see the development of an agency similar to the Swedish Institute, which is based in Stockholm (see panel): "We aren't a big enough country to maintain cultural institutions in other countries like the British Council does." Doireann Ni Bhriain, Irish commissioner of L'Imaginaire Irlandais, is also in favour of the new agency: "Working on L'Imaginaire was mostly virgin territory for me. If we had had an agency for promoting Irish art abroad, the ground work would have been done, whereas at the moment, it is all very piecemeal." She mentions the frustration of not being able to meet demands from the French for videos and publications so that they could see examples of the Irish art she was enthusing about: "It is costly and time consuming to get hold of these things, but you have to package the product in a coherent way. The proposed agency could do just that.
Sarah Finlay, Visual Arts Officer of the Arts Council, notes the importance of inviting international curators to Ireland to see what is happening here: "The Sydney Biennale is coming up, and the curators usually travel to various centres in Europe to select the work for the show. They don't generally come to Ireland. This new agency could ensure that whoever comes from Sydney to London also comes over to Ireland. These visits could so easily be arranged as a matter of course.
She points to the highly improved representation of Irish visual art abroad, thanks in part to the strategic spending of small sums of money by the CRC: "Last year they funded Kathy Prendergast and Shane Cullen to go to the Venice Biennale, and Kathy won the prize for the most outstanding artist under 40. In 1993 they sent Dorothy Cross and Willie Doherty, both of whom are now very active on, the international scene."
Micheal O Siadhail, poet and CRC member, says that the CRC has already done good work on its tiny budget, citing the work of ILE (Ireland Literature Exchange) of which he is chairman: "Over the last three years ILE has facilitated the translation of nearly 50 works of Irish literature, including Mairtin O Cadhain into ,Norwegian and Colm Toibin into Japanese.
ANOTHER literary achievement 15 the European Poetry Translation Network, of which Ireland is a member. Nevertheless, Theo Dorgan, director of Poetry Ireland, is frustrated that there is no body which could take a pro active role in initiating Irish literary events abroad: "Festival organisers from overseas ring us in Poetry Ireland and ask us to recommend Irish poets. We usually suggest a range, of well established and new poets. But this is only a reactive role."
As for theatre, Siobhan Bourke, general manager of Rough Magic Theatre Company and a member of the CRC, came up with the idea for the Dublin Theatre Festival's Theatre Shop, now in its third year of existence. Presenters from countries as diverse as Poland and the US come to "shop" for Irish theatre. Bourke believes that the proposed new arts agency could have a valuable role in allowing Irish theatre practitioners to go abroad and see theatre in other countries, something which many of them have not yet done: "It is difficult to sell what you are doing to European markets if you have never been to these countries to see what it is you are trying to sell into."
People are curious about what the role of the CRC will be if the new agency goes ahead and where funding will come from for the new agency. How will it be structured and how extensive will its powers be? "Will the agency decide what shows get put on abroad?" asks Michael Colgan, artistic director of the Gate Theatre, and,, "Will the agency look for a fee from artists it is sending abroad?"
Both Siobhan Bourke and pianist John O'Conor agree that the agency would be best run by one highly dedicated and well in formed individual: "I think one person should decide what we need to pursue over the next five years. Then a policy could be decided," says Bourke. "An agency boils down to a person," says O'Conor. "You would need to find someone who could take this on as a personal crusade."
He is in favouchanism that helps Irish artists difficult process of breaking in to the international scene. "Connections that are made normally happen on a personal basis: it takes years to build them up.
This whole debate can too often disregard the vital component: the artists themselves, without whom this highly marketable "product" - Irish art - would not even exist. Theo Dorgan stresses that looking after their needs when they do go abroad to represent Ireland should be a major priority of any new arts agency: "In the words of the great Clare traditional musician Micho Russell: `Where am I playing? Where am I staying? And who's paying?'"
