Economic factors are not the principal justification for funding the arts, the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Ms Sile de Valera, said yesterday. She was summarising the findings of a report published by her Department last night on an independent review of the last Arts Council's national plan, The Arts Plan 1995-98.
The review was commissioned from Indecon Economic Consultants and PricewaterhouseCooper by the Minister, who adopted The Arts Plan on taking office. As the current Arts Council prepares its new arts plan, which is expected to be submitted to Government for approval in early March, it has been requested by the Minister to take into consideration the conclusions of the Indecon review.
The Arts Plan 1995-98 was the first national plan for the arts in the history of the State and was commissioned from the Arts Council in 1994 by the former Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Mr Michael D. Higgins, and adopted as Government policy in 1995. It attempted to delineate the needs and objectives of the sector and to develop strategies in a cohesive way.
The Indecon consultants' review process entailed public meetings with the arts community, questionnaires, interviews and direct submissions from arts practitioners. In parallel, the Arts Council initiated its own extended consultation process, holding two major conferences last summer, followed by a series of smaller, more focused sessions. The consultants' aim was to examine the extent to which the objectives in The Arts Plan 1995- 98 were achieved and to evaluate the economic impact of the Arts Council's expenditure. Contrary to fears expressed by many arts practitioners that a review conducted by economists might apply purely quantitative criteria to the arts, their report, called Succeeding Better, firmly states that "the arts must be primarily evaluated in terms of the artistic objectives which are set and not narrowly evaluated on financial or even on wider economic impacts". This central message was reiterated by the Minister yesterday: "The arts have been and continue to be of considerable importance to the culture and fabric of our society, and economic factors, although relevant in terms of good management of public resources, are not the principal or sole justification for funding the arts." The report's emphasis on cultural objectives was warmly welcomed by the Director of the Arts Council, Ms Patricia Quinn. "This is a really useful, powerful assertion," she said, "and it confounds everybody. It brings us back to the innate value of the arts, not the instrumental or extraneous value."
The Indecon report highlights "the need to remove complacency", and for the sector and Arts Council "to consider the need for radical change", particularly in the ways in which funding is allocated. It advocates "the partial replacement of general subsidies with something akin to public service contracts" - that is, specific, targeted funding - as well as the integration of capital and revenue funding decisions. More contentiously, it also recommends a selective approach, whereby revenue funding for new arts organisations would be "significantly restricted until existing organisations are adequately resourced". In response, Ms Quinn said that the Arts Council was "not accepting that wholesale. We always need to provided for innovation - that's axiomatic."
A significant problem with the The Arts Plan 1995-98 identified by the report was that many of its objectives were specified in a manner that made it "almost impossible" to assess whether they had been achieved. The report advocates that "objectives for the next plan should be specified in a manner more amenable to quantification and measurement".
The report concludes that at the end of the life of The Arts Plan 1995-98, "major challenges concerning the structure, resources and viability of the arts" remain, which prevent "individual artists and organisations from realising their potential". These include: the lack of development of international markets for Irish arts; the fragmented nature of the arts sector; variance in quality and lack of interaction between arts organisations; and lack of progress in relation to arts education and appreciation.