It's a christening of sorts and invited to the party is a selection of business types mixed with arty types. In come the pinstripes, and occasional splashes of colour. They enter the lofty elegance of the House of Lords at the Bank of Ireland on College Green. "What's the new name?" they whisper. It's a secret, we are told. Wait. It's a new name for a new era, says Brigid Roden, chief executive of the newly-named organisation. Cothu, the Business Council for the Arts, which was established in the mid 1980s, is to be renamed. "It's a name that signifies a two-way flow . . . We wanted to get the whole concept of the two-way street out there." They toyed with names such as "fusion", "tandem" and pArtnership but in the end "the whole concept of business and the arts working together" had to be contained in the name, she says. And the new name is - da da - Business2Arts.
Business and arts? Surely, that's an oxymoron. "You mean the pinstripe sort of feeling - well, that's an over-simplification," says Kevin Kelly, managing director of AIB, dressed in a dark pinstripe suit himself for the occasion. He chats to Antoinette Murphy, of the Peppercanister Gallery, who is resplendent in a red, satin suit. They recall the Italians and their historic patronage of the arts. Others whisper the name Medici. It's not a contradiction in terms, according to Tim Stockhil, of the UK organisation, Arts & Business, who points to the little silver ampersand on his lapel as being significant.
"Don't you think money is sexy?" he asks. Em, well. Also present is Mairtin McCullough, a former chair of the Arts Council and a founding member of Cothu, who believes the marrying of business and the arts "has become glamorous" in recent times. And just in from their summer residence in Termonfeckin, Co Louth are Dermot Egan, chairman of the National Concert Hall and a former chair of Cothu, and his wife, Noreen Egan. "The more you mix the two (the arts and business) the better," says Egan.
Also here to wet the head of the renamed council are Michael Maughan, chairman of the Gowan Group, and his wife, Gemma Smith Maughan. Another Cothu member is Frances Ruane, a New Yorker who has lived here for 27 years. Others gathered to toast the birth of Business2Arts are Raymond Keaveney, of the National Gallery of Ireland; Chris Coughlan, of Compaq Computers in Galway, and Fionnuala Sweeney of the Irish Film and Television Academy, (which is kind of like the Oscars, only better).