The Arts Council believes that the difficulties being caused by cutbacks in Government funding for the arts sector are temporary, writes Patricia Quinn.
It was inevitable that the round of difficult funding decisions made by the Arts Council at the end of December would be met with disappointment and a chorus of complaint from those working in the arts. The collective sense of "devastation" has not receded, as evidenced most recently by a letter to this newspaper from some of the acknowledged leaders in the sector.
Let me recap the questions posed in the public domain over the last four weeks. What influenced the choices made? Why were some organisations hit harder than others? How could a funding reduction to the Arts Council of less than 10 per cent have created such misery? What right has the council to employ artistic criteria in decision-making? Is there a "climate of fear"? Was this not, in the rather harsh words of The Irish Times's arts diarist of December 21st, a chance for the Arts Council to "clear out the attic", to shed some dead wood?
There isn't a simple answer to these questions, but here are some facts. The Arts Council's five-year arts plan, the implementation of which is a stated aim of the Programme for Government, had a spending target of €53.7 million for 2003. In the event, given the downturn in the economy, the Government granted €44 million, 20 per cent less than the target, and 8 per cent less than the €47.7 million provided in 2002. The council learned of this figure only with the announcement of the Estimates for public expenditure on November 14th, two weeks after almost 400 funding applications had been received from arts organisations, totalling almost €70 million.
Once the Book of Estimates was published, the council met quickly to agree an amended budget, which would act as a guide for staff in preparing funding recommendations. The council set some general principles: look to the long-term interests of the arts; don't lose sight of artistic innovation, even in these hard times; protect the individual artist and the organisations providing him or her with essential services and supports; maintain funding to well-run organisations capable of artistic excellence, even if 2003 might be a tough year and one with less artistic activity than might already have been planned.
Letters then went out to the dozens of organisations that had made a multi-annual agreement with the council, invoking (with regret) the clause limiting the council's commitment in the event of a cut in our own funding from Government.
Like many other public sector agencies, the council made another, more fundamental, judgment: it decided to view this reversal in its fortunes as temporary rather than definitive. This is critical, because it might help to explain what are to many in the sector inexplicable decisions. We knew that a reduction of only 15 per cent in funding to production companies might in some cases result in as much as a 50 per cent reduction in activity, because of the diseconomies of scale.
But in the main we were not ready to make decisions that would result in the closure of companies, which in most cases have taken years of hard and thankless work to build up. We will have to face that possibility if next year is as bad (or even worse) than this.
Only time will tell if the Arts Council's determined optimism proves to have been misplaced. Optimism is a prevailing characteristic of people working in the arts, which is probably just as well. Anybody who has had any experience of an artistic enterprise will know how much the artist or the arts organisation trades on determination, on will, on the triumph of hope over experience. And on good management.
THE Arts Council is not going to be persuaded or browbeaten out of its espousal of better management in the arts by those who accuse it of introducing inappropriate "business" principles to the criteria for grant-giving.
There are some aspects to the policy rationale for public funding of the arts in Ireland which are very precious. They should not be taken for granted by anyone - the sector, the Arts Council, the general public. In Ireland, we have a regard for the artist as individual; we place a value on art in its own right, and do not ask more of it than that it surprise, delight, disturb us. Unlike many arts councils elsewhere, the council here does not require grant applicants to demonstrate social, employment or any other economic impacts as a condition of funding. Our concern is, first, the quality of the work, and, second, its reach into society.
So, yes, we will continue to insist on artistic values in every funding choice we make, tempered by other factors: the audience for the work; the financial cost, relative to other competitive demands for similar funding; the other sources of funding and whether these are being fully realised; the long-term sustainability of the particular sub-sector, whether it be dance, literature, architecture or visual arts.
The other reason for optimism is that we in the Arts Council are no longer alone in providing for the policy planning and the day-to-day support of the arts throughout Ireland. Has anybody noticed what's happening in local government? Local representatives are voting a significant share of their funds to arts centres, theatres, arts festivals. City managers are making passionate speeches in public about works of art, and artistic issues. In other words, the arts have become a political issue.
The Arts Council can only spend what it has been given. By joining the debate in these hard times, the sector has shown that art is a public benefit which has been threatened by a cut in public funding.
This is welcome: people in the arts were silent before, when funding was steadily growing. Let them stay engaged, and make this a debate characterised by nuance and subtlety rather than sound and fury. It is time to hear from Vladimir and Estragon, not Punch and Judy.
Patricia Quinn is director of the Arts Council