ARTSCAPE/Victoria White: Introducing a Saturday arts news column.
"We're lepers", "singled out", "ghettoised" - some of the trad-heads at this week's launch of the Arts Council's 'Arts Plan 2002-2006' were less than overjoyed by news that a standing committee is to be formed to advise the Arts Council on "traditional arts".
"I don't understand why traditional music was singled out for this special attention," said Nicholas Carolan, director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive. "I don't understand what the rationale behind it was - but I'd be interested in hearing."
He can hazard a guess, however - he thinks it stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of "traditional arts" as being more a heritage item than living arts. "Traditional music is a contemporary art. It's practised contemporarily. That's why it's justified in getting State funding," he says.
Síle de Valera's new Arts Bill, which advocates a reduction in the number of members on the Arts Council, sets up two other standing committees: one to advise on the arts and local authorities, the other on new arts and innovation. But the traditional arts committee seems special, being charged with advising the council "on the advance of money to any person relating to traditional Irish arts". The committees will consist of five people, a chairperson and two members appointed by the Minister and two members appointed by the Arts Council.
Terry Moylan, the traditional music writer, piper and founder of Brooks Academy of set dancing, thinks it amounts to nothing short of a separate decision-making body for traditional music and dancing. He refers to the suggestion in the Minister's discussion document on the Bill that there should be a separate Arts Council for the "traditional arts": "It seems she's determined to press ahead with this agenda. She's dressed it up, that's all. The standing committee will make the decisions."
He links this to what he says was an "orchestrated campaign" by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann to have the separate traditional arts council set up. "Every branch sent in a submission in favour of it. It's a question of Comhaltas wanting to get their hands on the purse-strings. It's like putting Microsoft - the biggest player in the field - in charge of the computer industry."
Tom Sherlock, who manages Altan, the Ó Domhnaills, Liam Óg Ó Floinn and Paddy Glackin, also worries that Comhaltas will have too much power on the board: "One would hope that they would recognise that traditional music is a broad church and can't be appropriated by any one movement."
The director-general of Comhaltas, Labhrás Ó Murchú, counters: "I don't know how we come into the equation at all. The Minister makes the appointments." He welcomes the standing committee because the traditional arts have developed so much they need the "expert input" such a "developmental body" could provide and an eight-member Arts Council could not.
Battle is joined.
The Dublin-born-and-raised artist, Clare Langan, has come back from the Sao Paolo Biennale with a nest egg. She herself will not stoop to discussing money - but her privacy was blown this week when Arts Council chairman Patrick Murphy announced to the multitudes at the launch of the 'Arts Plan' that a collector had spent in the region of $50,000 on her film work.
The man with the chequebook is Tony Podesta, an American collector about whom Langan says she knows little. But he's bought an edition of three of her films: 40 Below, which is filmed underwater; Too Dark for Night, filmed in the desert, and a new film, to be shown at the Liverpool Biennale in September. Langan is scouting for the right volcanic area to shoot it in.
Another visual artist celebrating this week is the young Co Louth-born artist, Katie Holten. Her installation-based work, often concerned with our attempts to control aspects of the world, has won the €20,000 AIB Prize for an artist of promise.
The disappearance of Janácek's Jenufa from Opera Ireland's forthcoming season at the Gaiety Theatre is not the only immediate fallout from the company's recent financial woes. Co-Opera, its touring arm, is moving out - not just out of Opera Ireland, but out of Dublin. Co-Opera's new partner is the Belltable Arts Centre in Limerick. Under the arrangement, Co-Opera will be the resident performing arts company at the Belltable "with responsibilities for devising an imaginative programme for the arts centre; for the further development of community outreach and access work, and for contributing to the management of the Arts Centre as a whole".
Co-Opera's director, Michael Hunt, becomes the Belltable's associate director, with Liz Culloty remaining as executive director and chief executive as the company prepares for its 21st birthday celebrations. The first production of the new entity, Co-Opera@The Belltable, will be a June revival of last year's La Bohème.