ARTSCAPE:HOW INSPIRING, how visionary, how imaginative is the approach of our Government to the financial crisis – reforming structures, rooting out inefficiency and corruption, making those who created the mess accountable before looking to others for a proportionate distribution of pain, far-thinking and fair, taking the opportunity to put it right at this stage and spend taxpayers' money wisely. Oh sorry, I was daydreaming.
In better times, State spending on arts (not a bread and butter area, it’s true, but not characterised by waste or inefficiency either) saw small increases create far-reaching effects. And now, relatively small cuts in a relatively small budget will have effects way out of proportion to the savings made: companies are already being wound up, jobs have been lost, and productions and plans cancelled. How imaginative, how uplifting. Bread and circuses.
Other countries look at the role of culture and imagination in a recession differently. France has allocated an extra €100 million to the ministry of culture to spend on arts and museums, the Art Newspaper reports. The supplementary funding, which complements the 2009 culture budget of €2.9 billion, is part of a plan to help revive the ailing economy. The funds will be used to preserve 150 historic monuments and “speed up major cultural projects, such as the planned Museum of European and Mediterranean civilisations,” says the ministry.
And the federal cultural budget of Germany has been increased – for the fourth time in a row – by 3.5 per cent, reaching €1.14bn in 2009. “This is an excellent result for culture,” said the minister for culture, Bernd Neumann. Since he took office in autumn 2005, the federal cultural budget has increased by over 20 per cent. Among those who will benefit from the increase is the Jewish museum in Berlin, receiving €6m for an extension, while €15m is set aside for a reunification and freedom memorial in the capital. The lion’s share of all cultural expenses in Germany, however, is paid by the federal states and communes, adding up to around €7bn a year.
Even Israel has approved an increase in the culture budget of 16m shekels (€3.1m) over three years. The agreement was signed in lieu of a culture bill that became moot when Israel’s parliament went into recess unexpectedly in late October. Orthodox rabbi Michael Melchior, a Labour MP who heads parliament’s education committee, sponsored the private bill last year to raise the culture budget, following Unesco’s recommendations for member states to have culture budgets that are 1 per cent of the national budget. Israel’s budget then was around 0.2 per cent. The initial reading passed almost unanimously, but the bill has to be re-submitted in three years. Culture proponents say the agreement is significant in light of the financial situation, where many budget cuts were expected. “[But] the struggle is not over,” said culture minister Ghaleb Majadle. “A country that doesn’t invest in culture is a country without a soul.”
- Not onebut two Irish theatre directors are in the running for a top Toronto job, it was reported in the Toronto Star this week. It reports rumours abounding about the Canadian Stage Company's appointment of a leader. No offers have been made, apparently, and at least one of the final candidates is not a Canadian. Ben Barnes, former Abbey director, now at Waterford's Theatre Royal, and no stranger to the Canadian theatre scene, where he has directed many shows during and since his tenure at the Abbey, is cited as a rumoured candidate, along with Jason Byrne of Loose Canon Theatre. Also in the running, says the Star, is Canadian Don Shipley, former Dublin Theatre Festival director.
- For abit of uplift in bad times, tune into a radio documentary about the Butterfly Club tomorrow (Newstalk 106-108FM, 9pm). The ladies-only singing club (named after the late Mayo-born soprano Margaret Burke-Sheridan, Puccini's favourite Butterfly) meets monthly in Dublin to sing with piano accompaniment, and celebrate Halloween (when they get dressed up) and Easter (when they wear bonnets). The Butterfly Club was set up 13 years ago to rival the men-only singing clubs, the Bohemians and the 43 Club; the average age of the women is mid-70s, and the social dimension is as important as the musical one. Maeve O'Sullivan, who made the programme, found the singers inspirational, and fun too.
- Fans ofArtoon (pictured) can get another angle on Tom Mathews' individual style and wordplay in his The New Adventures of Keats and Chapman, where the jokes are verbal rather than visual. The pocket-sized book from New Island (€13.95) is a collection of short pieces by Mathews (originally seen in Hot Press), in the style and wit of Flann O'Brien's famous Keats and Chapman sketches, each constructed around the punchline, an outrageous and absurd pun.
- The workof the little-known sound art collective Grúpat is being showcased at Dublin's Project for five days from Tuesday. The retrospective is curated by composer Jennifer Walshe, and commissioned by South Dublin County Council's INContext3 Per Cent for Art Programme, writes Michael Dervan. A book and set of CDs are being issued, and if you want to know more about figures such as Turf Boon Bulletin M or Ekeoirn O'Connor, learn about the Avant Gardaí, or feel like sampling the output of an "über-geek- hacker" (The Parks Service), Project is the place to go.
- This year'sSydney Festival wound up last weekend when the Gate had an afternoon of readings to pay tribute to playwright, essayist and poet Harold Pinter, who passed away on Christmas Eve. Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett (co-artistic director of Sydney Theatre Company) performed from Pinter's work, along with Irish actors Owen Roe and Niall Buggy and Australian actor Robert Menzies. The tribute at the Sydney Theatre was directed and introduced by Michael Colgan, director of the Gate, which is planning another retrospective of Pinter's work in Dublin next year. The event closed Gate|Friel in Sydney, about which the Sydney Morning Herald wrote, "The storytelling, as to be expected of the Gate Theatre, is highly accomplished and . . . works its magic in the most natural and unforced of ways," while The Australian said the "celebration of Friel's 80th birthday . . . the last of Fergus Linehan's four festivals, has been wonderful."
