Madam, – The Irish Writers’ Centre is extremely disappointed that the Arts Council has rejected its application for a grant for 2010. Until 2009 the centre received an annual grant to enable it function as an organisation providing a venue and a service to writers and the public, but the grant was withheld last year on the basis of a value-for-money assessment. Over the past year the centre has addressed all the criticism and misgivings that led to the withholding of the grant.
It has renewed itself and reformed entirely. Through the efforts of the board and a team of voluntary staff we have now established a vibrant and exciting centre. Within the literature community there has been a consensus endorsing its case for funding. It is baffling and disappointing that the Arts Council has not responded to that clear wish of the literature community.
Dublin has lodged an application to Unesco for a special designation as a City of Literature. If this is granted, Dublin, and Ireland, would be able to enhance its cultural profile and its attraction to cultural tourists. But the designation would be granted and maintained on the vibrancy of the contemporary writing environment and on the infrastructure that exists to sustain and develop that vibrancy.
In view of this, the decision of the Arts Council to jeopardise the Irish Writers’ Centre is myopic in the extreme.
Last autumn, when the Arts Council faced the spectre of a catastrophic cut in funding for the arts, it issued a call-to-arms and asked writers to join the vanguard on the basis that literature was demonstrably our extraordinary performer in the arts arena. Reasonable damage limitation was achieved, but the recent grant allocations to literature do not reflect the enormous esteem for writers and writing the council espoused just a few months ago. – Yours, etc,