Critics of the Arts Council are urging it to take a more militant approach in its funding battles with the Government. But such posturing is sure to prove much less effective than forming a united front in 'the long march through the institutions', argues Theo Dorgan

MARIAN FITZGIBBON'S recent article, "It's time to go on the offensive" ( Irish Times, August 26th), seems to me confused. On the one hand she calls on the Arts Council to be combative and confrontational, in effect to posture before the Government (and the public) brandishing a list of demands; on the other hand she claims to understand that "it is probably neither possible nor desirable for the Arts Council to man the barricades today against those with whom it will have to sit down tomorrow to negotiate plans and funding".

Which is it to be? And why this tired old trope of manning the barricades? In the aftermath of the great convulsions of 1968, the radical leaders of Germany's student movement identified a dilemma for progressives: to posture on the streets, pitting flesh and bone against tanks, or to embark on what Rudi Dutschke described as "the long march through the institutions"?

Neither approach is without its dangers, as bitter human experience has taught us: the posturing romantic who ends up running daddy's business is an all-too-familiar type, as is the mirror twin, the ageing radical whose values and passion are in the end subverted by the very institution he joined in order to overturn it.

Dutschke's pragmatic and brave choice seems to me still prescient and productive, provided always that that those who embark on the long march are clearly focused and succeed in keeping their values intact. It isn't half as much fun as megaphone diplomacy, but patient, relentless dialogue produces the results - and results count.

Fitzgibbon also writes that "the council needs to be a strong, clear voice that challenges, questions and argues forcefully". She's right, of course, but if she means to imply, as I think she does, that the outgoing council has been and done none of these things, then she is, simply, wrong - as she concedes, unintentionally, in her long catalogue of what the council has, in fact, achieved.

Under the former minister for arts, John O'Donoghue, Arts Council funding increased from a 2003 figure of €44.1 million to a total of €85 million in 2008, a considerable rise in itself but also in the trajectory of funding increases over the previous 10 years. Most importantly, the aspiration to see the council's proposed target of €100 million achieved as soon as possible was accepted by the Government during this period.

It is true that the graph flattened out during Séamus Brennan's stewardship of the arts department, but this is to say no more than that Brennan was unmoved by arguments which had moved and convinced his enlightened predecessor. It remains to be seen whether the current Minister for Arts, Martin Cullen, has the clout at Cabinet, and the intellectual firepower, to resume the climb towards the agreed funding levels. It is a poor analysis that makes no connection between the Arts Council's work of advocacy and a near 100 per cent increase in funding during its term of office. Nobody, I hope, would imagine that such an increase in funding was forced on a shy and bashful council by an importuning Government (ah go on, go on, go on . . .). It was necessary to be very tough-minded indeed to get the Government even this far.

Fitzgibbon's powers of analysis fail her, alas, even more when it comes to Partnership for the Arts, the policy document published by the Arts Council in 2006 and which has guided all our work since then.

Partnership for the Artsreplaces a policy with a very different orientation. We have moved the council decisively from a Procrustean position where it was, in effect, setting targets and then inviting artists and arts organisations to meet them, to a position that respects and makes central the autonomy of individual artists and arts organisations. The paradigm shift is from a central planning/ directive model to one in which the council values, encourages, supports and rewards autonomous initiative. This is a fundamental shift of perspective, not as Fitzgibbon would have it, "a change from major to minor".

MANY STRUGGLES REMAIN to be won. Of course there is a funding crisis in the arts - who knows that better than we know it ourselves? Of course the present Arts Council would much prefer to be in a position to meet all legitimate demands made of it, all the more so as it is almost entirely composed of artists or people who are or have been arts managers and activists themselves. Of course there are large challenges in the areas of social inclusion and of arts and education where the struggle is ongoing.

The indifference with which the then minister for education, Mary Hanafin, and her department greeted the work of the Special Committee on the Arts and Education was disheartening - and a lesson in realpolitik also. There are limits to what even the most robust and passionate council can achieve in the face of cold hearts and stonewalling. I shall be interested to see if matters improve under stewardship of the new Minister for Education, Batt O'Keeffe.

When the power to act was in the hands of the Arts Council alone, by contrast, it moved quickly and decisively. The report on the traditional arts, for instance, was adopted in full within 20 minutes of being tabled (surely some sort of record?) and the adoption was buttressed by the immediate allocation of €300,000 from the next year's budget to give substance to this new commitment. This council also, for the record, took on the mess that was the Abbey Theatre and was decisive in turning that institution's fortunes firmly around.

It is, of course, possible that a council differently composed might have achieved even better results, but I can assure Marian Fitzgibbon that we fought long and exhaustively, to the best of our abilities, to reform the council's operations, to deepen its comprehension of what is needed, to bring understanding to Government, and to secure the resources they badly need for our colleagues all over Ireland.

The subtext of Fitzgibbon's article was that the Arts Council had failed to exercise independence, failed to win adequate resources for artists, the public and arts organisations; failed, if I may extrapolate, to build that powerful political constituency which, in the last analysis, is what is needed if we are to wrest from the coffers of the State what might be considered proper funding for the arts.

On this latter point alone, one she leads up to, implies but does not actually make, she is partly right, but one has to question if building this political constituency is, in fact, either a useful or a legitimate role for the Arts Council. The council staff are in no position to do so, as public servants; the council itself can only offer leadership. I have been disappointed to note that, with a few honourable exceptions, arts organisations in particular have failed to take up the challenge of partnership in joining with the Arts Council to make the case for funding to the Government.

A nation, a people, is defined by the breadth, depth and ambition of its culture - and we are no mean people. Every street, every parish in Ireland has its writer, singer, actor, fiddler, painter, poet or band in the making. In the civil Republic, art is pervasive - valued, experienced, made and appreciated. Why, then, is the experience of art not properly resourced and understood by the State?

In part, this is because many of those best qualified to present the argument to the power elites have failed to accept their historical duty to make the case for themselves and for us all. The sad truth is that far too many arts organisations and activists suffer from a failure of political imagination; specifically, they have failed to join in the argument that a State which fails to provide adequately for its culture, in the broadest sense, is no more than an economy.

Worse, many have surrendered to an outdated clientelist model: instead of demanding, in every constituency in the country, from every TD they can get their hands on, the resources to function as they need and deserve to, they turn to the Arts Council as so many disempowered supplicants, only to experience, unsurprisingly, perpetual disappointment. The better-resourced the council is, the sooner we can all move forward from the present model.

The truth is that the Arts Council, from its present grant, while protecting the level of support currently offered to the individual artist, can give exactly what is required and needed to no more than two-thirds of the arts organisations in the Republic.

The council has no moral right to withdraw funding from any well-managed organisation providing a valuable and professional arts service to the Irish people. Yet, in order to fund two-thirds of its client-partners adequately, this is what would have to be done.

Wearily, time after time, when approached by someone dissatisfied with their grant (and rightly so), I have taken out the list of recipients and asked two questions: Which of these should we murder in order to fund you? And what are you doing to put pressure on the Government to make adequate provision for the arts? Answer, usually, comes there none.

The blunt fact is - and it astonishes me it should be necessary to say this - that the Arts Council can only disburse what it receives. The level of exchequer grant to the council in a given year is determined proximately by the goodwill (and power at Cabinet) of the Minister, and ultimately by the calculation of how important arts funding seems to the electorate. The Arts Council is a powerful advocate in this process only up to a point. It is both defined and limited by statute. It can be isolated as a single voice. It can argue as forcefully as we have done for more resources, but unless this is backed up by relentless political pressure from artists, arts organisations and the public whom we serve, it is all too easy to ignore us all.

Unless the long march through the institutions is backed up and validated by a democratic expression of the popular will, there will be, at best, in the current climate especially, only minimal change. Marian Fitzgibbon, in the long Irish tradition of shooting your friend first, aims her fire at the council when, in fact, it is only the Government that can meet her (and our) demands. Even an old agnostic like me can see the truth in the old contention, that God helps those who help themselves. Partnership, anyone?

•Theo Dorgan is an outgoing member of the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon, a poet and writer with 25 years' experience as an arts administrator. He writes here in a personal capacity