Full steam ahead for Culture Ireland

ArtScape: The Arts Council is still dragging its heels about a national touring strategy, but Culture Ireland (CI) looks like it's full steam ahead. The Minister for Arts, John O'Donoghue, has just approved CI's strategy - broadly the draft strategy which it published earlier this year - setting out its mission and goals for 2006-2010.

The strategy follows a public consultation process and seems to have been welcomed by those who might work with the agency, chaired by composer Micheál O Súilleabháin. So far CI has opted to work with existing organisations ("rather than reinvent the wheel" is the phrase that's been used) to support work already taking place: working with the Irish Architecture Foundation for the architecture biennale opening on September 10th in Venice, and with Irish Theatre Institute in supporting Irish companies going to Edinburgh. "The board of Culture Ireland, in its first year," the Minister said this week, "has already helped to create opportunities for many Irish artists and cultural practitioners abroad and one of the many benefits of its work is the increased mutual understanding between Irish and other cultures. This strategy gives a solid and transparent base on which Culture Ireland can develop further."

And his approval of what is an ambitious strategy for promoting Irish arts abroad means that the next step for CI - which has a board meeting in Dublin Castle on Monday morning - is to "make it happen", says Ó Súilleabháin. Which means a budget to back up the strategy, including the establishment of a statutory body, with a full-time executive. CI had a budget of €2 million when it was set up last year, which was increased to €3 million this year (its precursor, the Cultural Relations Committee, had a €700,000 budget in 2004).

They expect to know by the end of the year what funding may be next year, and would be very disappointed if an independent, internationally recruited chief executive or director - with a salary at principal officer level of about €100,000 - is not in place by the end of 2007. Ó Súilleabháin sees CI in 2007 "moving towards an initial important visionary point where the whole thing begins to move from this domain, of a voluntary board, which is strong but not arrogant, backed by a small, highly efficient civil service office [within the Department of Arts, where Christine Sisk is acting secretary to the board], to its own location, with an independent head and staff".

Setting up an agency on that basis doesn't come cheap, and CI suggests funding of €6 million for its first year - €1.2m to cover salaries, administration, rent, communications and marketing, and the rest for funding artistic work. CI's strategy will be online at www.cultureireland.gov.ie next week.

So much for Irish work internationally; this week the issue of national touring hotted up with Lorna Donlon of Dunamaise Arts Centre writing in these pages about the lack of Irish theatre touring in Ireland. An Arts Council letter in response pointed out a July 19th press release with details of funding for arts organisations. "Reference was made in that release . . . to the fact that details of the council's new touring programme for arts organisations will be announced in the autumn. The Arts Council welcomes the NASC touring project initiated by seven Arts Council-funded venues. The Arts Council was pleased to support the NASC project by committing additional funding of €112,000 this year." I'm not sure what that means, either. And when does autumn begin?

All eyes on Granuaile

"We're looking at Broadway, and Broadway is looking at us." Remember that? That was John McColgan's line in 2004, when his production of The Shaughraun proved such a success on the Abbey stage that the marquees of Manhattan looked like a real possibility, writes Belinda McKeon from New York. A pasting in the West End soon put a stop to that, but 19th-century melodrama is all in the past now for McColgan and his wife and Riverdance co-producer Moya Doherty; these days, it's all about the swashbuckling 16th century, and Broadway is definitely returning their calls. This week saw the launch in New York of their multi-million dollar new musical The Pirate Queen, an epic of song, dance and enthusiastic Irishry based on the story of Grace O'Malley. The show will open for a "limited engagement" (read: test run) in Chicago on October 29th (until November), and will move to the Hilton Theatre on 43rd Street in February 2007, making it the first Irish-produced musical on Broadway. (No, Dancing at Lughnasa doesn't count.)

McColgan and Doherty look to have pulled out all the stops in finding, for Grace and her merry men, the requisite soaring score; though the budget remains under wraps, the writing team of Alain Boubil and Claude-Michel Schönberg will not have come cheap, given that they number Les Miserables and Miss Saigon among their past Broadway hits. Frank Galati, long affiliated with Steppenwolf, will direct, and the plentiful Irish dance scenes will be choreographed by Carol Leavy Joyce, who worked on Riverdance. Though the cast and ensemble are chiefly American, there will be some Irish performers onstage; the cast includes sean-nós singer Áine Uí Cheallaigh, and Sean Beglan (Cavan) and Padraic Moyles (Dublin) will be among the dancers. McColgan and Doherty hope to bring the show to Ireland but in the meantime, the show's website features a rehearsal webcam, www.thepiratequeen.com/castcom. Think Big Brother with jigs and misty arias. And don't worry, not a hot tub in sight.

A statement from the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism makes an interesting coda to reports of the sale of the Great Southern Hotel Group by the Dublin Airport Authority, the DAA, writes Aidan Dunne. It emerged last June that works of art had been removed from the Parknasilla Hotel, part of the hotel group, and taken to Dublin for valuation.

Minister for Arts John O'Donoghue made clear his view that because the artworks were acquired by what were, at the time, public companies (then part of the CIÉ group of companies), under the Arts Council's Joint Purchase Scheme (meaning the council contributed half the purchase price) the works should be regarded as public property and should find their way to the OPW and the National Collections.

One potentially complicating factor was that the terms of the Joint Purchase Scheme did not preclude work being sold on. In fact, some works were sold during the 1980s and 1990s. Nevertheless, the DAA indicated it had no intention of departing from Government policy when it came to disposing of the art.

When the dust had settled after the tendering process was complete and the new ownership of the hotels was announced, the Minister reported that the DAA had arranged to pass on the 56 or so works of art in the hotels to the OPW, "free of charge". At the Minister's request, an independent expert is compiling an inventory of all the works - perhaps in excess of 200 - acquired by CIÉ companies in the Joint Purchase Scheme.

The attitude to Israel and art - to boycott, or not to boycott - looks like it may raise its head at the Dublin Fringe Festival. Film director Ken Loach this week supported a call by Palestinian film-makers and artists "to boycott state-sponsored Israeli cultural institutions".

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) welcomed Loach's statement, and applauded recent decisions by the Irish Film Institute and the DúLaoghaire Festival of World Cultures to reject Israeli embassy sponsorship. The "IPSC is therefore deeply disturbed that the Dublin Fringe Festival has again taken sponsorship from the Israeli government for this year's festival. In light of Israel's war crimes in Lebanon, and its ongoing war crimes against the Palestinian people, the IPSC calls on artistic director Wolfgang Hoffmann to dissociate the Fringe Festival from this rogue state, and to immediately cancel Israeli government sponsorship."

In response, Hoffmann said: "The Magnet Entertainment Dublin Fringe Festival has accepted the support of the Israeli Embassy in Dublin to enable the Schlomit Fundaminsky Dance Company to perform at our festival. As an arts festival, we want to send out positive signals of inclusion and dialogue. Returning the sponsorship would have only prevented cultural dialogue and would not been helpful to anyone. The conflict in the Middle East is a complex issue and we feel that taking political sides in this way would be counter-productive."