ArtScape:Long live the Belfast Festival at Queen's. Or as it is now to be known, the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen's, writes Jane Coyle.
The bank has pledged £1.3 million (€1.75 million) in sponsorship over three years to the North's struggling flagship event, allowing director Graeme Farrow the unfamiliar experience of planning for the future. The announcement follows the recent grant from the Northern Ireland Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) of £300,000 (€404,000) over three years, as encouragement to private and corporate sponsors to follow suit.
"This is wonderful news. It represents a new dawn for us," says an upbeat Farrow. "The biggest creative benefit is that we can start planning for the long term. The festival has had a hand-to-mouth existence for every one of its 46 years and now we have a three-year deal from Ulster Bank, from the Minister and from Queen's University, plus the prospect of similar support from Belfast City Council and the Arts Council. I will soon be able to gauge exactly how much is in the pot for 2010, which is a completely new experience for the director of the Belfast Festival."
One of the strongest criticisms levelled at the festival over a number of years has been its low profile in the city. This is at the top of Farrow's list of priorities and he is adamant that its days of being a closely guarded secret are now over. "We are at last in the position of being able to market the event properly," he says. "The complaint has justifiably been made over and over again that you can be in Belfast during the festival and not know that there is something big happening. We will be dressing the city in some style and pushing out the boat outside the North to bring in visitors and capitalise on the rising trends in cultural tourism."
Farrow points to the successful partnership between Dublin Theatre Festival and Ulster Bank, which began last year, and says there may well be a degree of co-operation between the two events. "If you are in Dublin during the theatre festival, you just can't miss it," he says.
"More than anything, we can now be more ambitious in putting the wow factor back into the festival, programming events that people will travel to see. There are some very big names in prospect for 2008 and we hope to announce some highlights in late spring."
• The Irish Film Institute (IFI) has appointed Sarah Glennie as its director, succeeding Mark Mulqueen, who vacated the position last November, writes Michael Dwyer, Film Correspondent. She will take up the full-time job in the autumn and will work with the IFI on a consultative basis in the interim. During the transition period, the IFI will be managed by Annmarie Gray, acting director and head of finance and HR.
Glennie is at present the director of the Model Arts and Niland Gallery in Sligo. She was commissioner of the Irish Pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale, has curated projects for the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Cork 2005, and held positions at the Henry Moore Foundation and Imma.
"Sarah has a wealth of experience in strategic cultural planning and of running and working in public cultural institutions both in Ireland and internationally," says IFI chairwoman Eve-Anne Cullinan. "We are delighted to welcome her to lead one of the country's most popular cultural venues into an exciting period in its history. In 2007 the IFI staff engaged with over 300,000 people in our continually expanding and diverse programme. Sarah has the creative vision and organisational expertise to build on this success into the future."
• The musical connections that have opened up between Ireland and the Baltic states continue to develop, writes Michael Dervan. There was the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir's tour of the spiritual choral marathon that is Arvo Pärt's Kanon Pokajanen last September. The Latvian state choir, Latvija, this week gave the first performances of new works by Pärt, Latvian composers Georgs Pelecis and Rihards Dubra and Irish composer Deirdre McKay in Drogheda and Dundalk. Estonian conductor Tõnu Kaljuste made his debut with the RTÉ NSO last night in the opening concert of the RTÉ Living Music Festival that's devoted to Pärt's music. And one of the foremost interpreters of Pärt's work, Paul Hillier, who's also the author of the only English-language book on Pärt, has just been appointed artistic director and chief conductor of the National Chamber Choir (NCC).
Hillier, who was the principal conductor of the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir from 2001 to 2007, has already expressed a desire to delve into new music in Ireland, and deepen relationships with Irish composers. Behind that desire is his belief that "contemporary music should lie at the heart of what this choir does, but the music must be good and audiences must find it beautiful, intriguing and relevant to their lives. I also want the group to focus on performance of baroque and early classical repertoire, and here we will need to strengthen our connections with instrumental ensembles. At the same time we will also be developing connections with composers from much further afield, researching new modes of performance and programming, and exploring new strategies for recordings."
Hillier's appointment comes just a year after an upheaval that saw the NCC lose its previous artistic director, its chief executive and one of its board members in a flurry of resignations. That previous artistic director, Celso Antunes, has, by curious coincidence, just been appointed to a new job. He's to become chief conductor of the 74-member Netherlands Radio Choir (Groot Omroepkoor), one of the world's largest professional choirs, next August. Hillier will beat him to the post, however, taking up the conductorship of the NCC at the beginning of June.
• The ever more ambitious Dublin Fringe Festival is set for another change, with the news that this year's festival (September 6th to 21st) will be director Wolfgang Hoffmann's last. Hoffmann has been at the helm of the multidisciplinary festival since 2004, and has meantime continued his creative work as dancer and choreographer (he was previously with German dance company Fabrik Potsdam, which he co-founded) and has been artistic director of the acclaimed Aurora Nova festival, the acclaimed, programmed festival within a festival, part of Edinburgh's Fringe since 2001. Hoffmann says that "it is with deep regret that I had to make the decision to leave in September. The Fringe is a fantastic organisation to work with and I intend to make my last festival the best one yet". Fringe chairwoman Una Carmody said: "Wolfgang's work has brought and will continue to bring the Fringe in new directions and scale new challenges. He has been in charge of exciting new developments and will be much missed when he goes in September. The board wishes him well in his future endeavours and we all look forward to working with him in the coming months." The job will be advertised "in due course", with the aim of having a new director in place by October.
• Composer Roger Doyle this week scooped another award. He'll be presented today with the Overall Award for his six-part series Electrolight (broadcast by Lyric FM before Christmas) by the BCI New Adventures in Broadcasting Scheme at a ceremony in the Guinness Storehouse. Electrolight, the first series to be written, presented and produced by an Irish composer in his own studio, journeyed through the past six decades surveying electronic music and presenting its evolution. The adjudicators commented that it was extremely well crafted and thoroughly researched, noting the passion and enthusiasm of the programme's presenter and the excellent sound quality and scripting.
The awards, supporting new, innovative and diverse radio programming, are open to commercial, community and public service broadcasters. There were 35 programme proposals assessed for the current round of New Adventures in Broadcasting and 18 of them received funding of €143,000; 12 of those programmes were entered into competition. As well as the overall winner, two other awards will be presented today. Romancing Paddy Poleski (Beat FM) wins in the Innovation Category. Producer Jennifer Allen's series offered a glimpse into the lives of some of the southeast's newest couples - Magda from Poland and Joseph from Carlow discuss meeting while working in a local hotel and the cultural adjustments involved as they plan to marry.
Tall Tales from the Hallows and the Hills (Shannonside Northern Sound) wins in the Learning and Development Category, for writer/producer Kevin McCann's community programme, which gathered local writing and acting talent through a series of writing-for-radio workshops, coached by McCann to produce original drama scripts, which were then broadcast.