A year after its launch, Culture Ireland sets out its stall on how to bring Irish arts to the wider world, writes Arminta Wallace
The logo for Culture Ireland - the new organisation for the promotion of Irish arts abroad, unveiled by the Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism, John O'Donoghue, almost exactly a year ago - is simple, understated and smart.
Glance at it (far right, below), and you see the National Museum's marvellous gold Broighter Boat. Look more closely, and you could be looking at a disembowelled post-modernist harp; copy it in five swift strokes and you end up with something resembling Chinese calligraphy. As a logo it works at several levels, offers value for money and goes beyond the obvious - which, pretty much, is what everyone is hoping for from Culture Ireland itself.
So far, the signs are good. Culture Ireland does not yet have an office space or full-time staff, but it has been awarded funding of €3 million and a voluntary board is in place. Chaired by the creator of the highly successful Irish World Music Centre at the University of Limerick, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, the board includes traditional musician Davey Arthur, pianist Dearbhla Collins, Arts Council director Mary Cloake, the poet Peter Sirr and the director of the Gaiety School of Acting, Patrick Sutton, as well as business people and senior civil servants. The latter are drawn from both the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism and the Department of Foreign Affairs, under which Culture Ireland's predecessor, originally the Cultural Relations Committee, operated.
"As well as carrying on the role of the Cultural Relations Committee in terms of funding applications and so on, we're putting the final touches to a three-year draft strategy document, which we'll present to the Minister next month," Ó Súilleabháin explains. At that point, the details of a full-time executive, office space and other practical matters will be worked out.
"I would hope," he adds, "that by early 2007, Culture Ireland will really be up and running." In the meantime the draft report - which can be accessed online at www.dast.gov.ie - has received a positive response from a wide range of arts practitioners. "It's not just that people approve of it - they seem to be excited about it."
The report is about as far from the old "cultural diplomacy" idea of safe, stately State-sponsored art as it's possible to get. In fact, it's a case of "expect the unexpected". The introductory section, "The Wider Context", touches an extraordinary number of bases - ranging from low-cost air travel and digital media to Irish missionaries in the Third World and the Belfast Agreement - and points to their relevance for 21st century Irish arts. It
shows a cutting-edge awareness of how the business of making art has changed over the past decade, with a loosening-up of boundaries between "home" and "abroad", different (ie higher) audience expectations, and dramatic developments in the area of what constitutes cultural identity in an Ireland where the cultural skills of the various immigrant groupings represent an as-yet-untapped cultural resource.
THE REPORT ALSO acknowledges the way the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have radically re-framed the debate about international culture. Since we have had a somewhat fractured cultural history of our own, and have made some progress in healing those fractures in recent decades, it suggests that Ireland's artists might have a particular role to play in, for example, dialogue with Islamic societies, or such questions as Turkey's future role in Europe.
But is all this not a little ambitious for a fledgling organisation with a budget this year of €3 million (up from last year's figure of €2 million), which is still a long way behind the major players on the international cultural scene? "Well, in a globalised and globalising world it's no longer enough to have each national community flying the flag for its own cultural achievements," says Ó Súilleabháin.
"Culture Ireland's purpose is to promote and advance Irish arts in a global context. Our mission statement speaks about 'helping to create international opportunities for Irish artists and cultural practitioners leading to a deeper mutual understanding between Irish and other cultural communities'.
"I think there are three things there. One is taking arts associated with Ireland, and promoting and advancing them. The second is 'creating opportunities', whch seems to imply providing funding for networking - for getting people out there into the wider world and, indeed, getting people from the wider world back in. And the third thing is the potential, within artistic expression and artistic communica tion, for human healing. Many of us who are involved in the arts would agree that we're in there because we've been touched by something deeply worthwhile at a human level - so I'm really pleased that the draft strategy report is imbued with a recognition of the challenge, rather than the problem, of cultural difference. It sees the arts as somehow able to touch something at the heart of people's changing identity."
How to put these fine ideals into practice is, of course, the challenge. The report speaks of international audience development, inward and outward flows of creative work and ideas, and "bringing Irish experience and ideas to bear on global cultural challenges".
Pie in the sky? Not at all, says Gavin Quinn of Pan Pan Theatre Company, which - thanks partly to funding from Culture Ireland to the tune of €13,485 - is currently staging a new adaptation of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World in Beijing with Chinese actors. This, as he explains, is not simply a case of exporting a finished product but initiating a theatrical process in a country which, to date, has seen very little in the way of live Irish theatre. "It's all going very well, I must say, and the actors are excellent," he says.
"BUT THE MAIN thing about this kind of co-operative cultural venture is that it's not just a case of bringing in a show and then leaving. We're bringing a production team to Beijing for six weeks. The production opens on March 15th and will run for 10 performances at a central location in the city. If it's successful, it may tour to other parts of China in the autumn. We're also involved in organising a meeting of European theatre companies in Beijing in October. Obviously we've been talking to people in Beijing about this for some time - so what it does is help to establish deeper relationships which, in turn, set the scene for future co-productions."
Given Culture Ireland's budget restrictions and lack of, for example, a major overseas property portfolio, it will have to think outside the box when establishing international networks for Irish artists. One way to do this is via the internet. Plans are afoot for an online database: a multi-disciplinary version of Theatreshop's much-praised www.irishplayography.com, which lists all plays in Irish and English since 1950.
"It's academically based, but geared for the practitioner," says Ó Súilleabháin. "If you want to put on an Irish play you can find out where it has been produced, how to get the script and - most importantly - who owns the copyright." Though such websites are expensive and labour-intensive, we cannot afford to ignore what is a burgeoning virtual arts market, he says.
When it comes to international arts there is, however, no substitute for personal relationships.
The Culture Ireland draft strategy points out that although Irish embassies abroad have rarely had the luxury of specialist cultural attachés, our diplomats have often made remarkable and far-reaching efforts to promote Irish arts in far-flung places. The Pan Pan Playboy, for example, is a direct result of the 2004 Ireland-China exchange programme series - which was, to a great extent, the brainchild of a former Irish diplomat in Shanghai, Geoffrey Keating, now our ambassador to Bulgaria. Partnerships with key organisations within Ireland will also play a pivotal role.
"We don't feel we're starting from a zero base," says Ó Súilleabháin.
"An awful lot of people in Ireland have done an awful lot of work in the past 10 years - people such as the Irish Architectural Institute, for example, which is less than two years old. We feel that Culture Ireland will be energised by - and will, in turn, re-energise - the progress already made in the international arts arena. There's a real spirit of teamwork on the contemporary Irish arts scene, which we hope to tap into."
For the same reason, it is - clearly - vital that Culture Ireland attracts dedicated, dynamic staff and a high-calibre chief executive with enough civil service clout to get things done by not just one, but two Government departments. Ó Súilleabháin, who has a good deal of experience in such matters on the international academic scene, says he's confident that issues of co-operation with - and independence from - Government won't be a problem.
"Culture Ireland recognises the subversive qualities of art," he says. In other words, it will show Ireland to the world, warts and all? "Well, it would be the world, warts and all, from an Irish perspective," he says, with a chuckle.
"I don't think we're just in the business of showing Irish warts. If we do, perhaps we should show them in the context of global wartage, or some such.
"But," he adds, "we're not dealing with 'State' culture here. In many other countries art has to go abroad through a critical filter - which, essentially, is people's hesitancy as to how their country might be portrayed. You don't have to go back too far in Irish history to find that our own lack of self-esteem in the past made us very nervous about how we were portrayed.
"Of course we're all very cocky and arrogant now. But the other side of that coin is confidence in the relevance of the Irish artistic vision as a voice on the international artistic stage."
