Time, money and stamina permitting, someone with a passion for culture could spend every weekend over the next six months at an arts festival or summer school somewhere in Ireland.
As cultural events and dedicated arts centres proliferate, there is a heightened need for arts writers and commentators to respond to the deluge of artistic work being created and to the rapidly changing cultural climate.
In theory, performances and art works speak for themselves, of course, but the more reaction, mediation and evaluation they elicit - in the form of live public debate or in the media - the more chance they have of entering the collective bloodstream, of touching minds and hearts and igniting the imagination of viewers, readers or audiences.
If one of the most discouraging things for an artist is to feel that his or her work is created in a critical vacuum, surely one of the raisons d'Ωtre of arts journalists and critics - and of newspaper arts pages such as this one - is to ensure this does not happen.
In order to enrich public appreciation of art and to promote dialogue on its social, cultural and economic contexts, the Arts Council in its 50th anniversary year has initiated a programme called Critical Voices.
From now until December, it will bring international critics, writers and artists to Ireland to observe the cultural scene here, to place it in a global context and to participate in public debate with their Irish counterparts. The Irish Times is a partner in the programme with Lyric FM, Aer Lingus and TASCQ, an association of Temple Bar traders.
Over the next six months, on this page and elsewhere in the newspaper, we will publish articles and essays on aspects of Irish and international culture written by the visiting critics, as well as interviews with them written by our own team of arts writers.
The visiting critics will attend the principal arts festivals and take part in panel discussions with artists, directors, curators, festival programmers and commentators.
Critical Voices is curated by Fiach MacConghail, former artistic director of Project Arts Centre, director of the Irish programme at last year's Expo in Hanover, a judge of the Irish Times/ESB Theatre Awards 2001 and the newly appointed programme manager of the Irish College in Paris, which is being developed as a premier cultural centre.
Over the past few months he has been liaising with arts festivals, organisations and institutions throughout the Republic, many of which have become partners in the Critical Voices programme.
Further information on Critical Voices events and on forthcoming Irish Times articles will be published here over the coming months. It will also be available on the Arts Council's website, www.artscouncil.ie.
