Too Galway, or not Galway enough? Deirdre Falvey samples the local and the international at the arts festival.

What good are the arts? It's a question that attracts glib or emotional responses which tend to descend into waffle under the penetrating gaze of the British academic and critic posing it, John Carey. Carey's controversial book of that name was the jumping-off point for a discussion between him and a panel of four chaired by Donald Clarke at the Galway Arts Festival.

Carey discussed the reasons that historically the arts were supposed to be good for us, and the roles they have played: as social markers distinguishing one group from another; as something that separates us from other animals; the spiritual uplift or rapture they evoke. His book sets out to rationally explore the question posed by its title, and then Carey subjectively argues to the case for the superiority of literature.

The panellists were director Garry Hynes, playwright Stuart Carolan, novelist Pat McCabe and artist Stephen Dee, with Carey arguing persuasively against the opposition of high and low art, and McCabe - who has a healthy interest in popular culture himself - commenting that if it comes to a performance of Panis Angelicus and an episode of Big Brother, he knows which is not art.

Hynes brought up the issue of access, and the price of tickets - mentioning how, when Britain's National Theatre slashed ticket prices, attendances went way up, debunking assumptions that people don't want to go to "high art" (which got applause). Which leads to the issue of funding - Hynes pointed out that if Druid were to charge what it costs to make work, tickets would be about €150 a head.

Only at a comment by Hynes about the importance of distinctions between professional and amateur work - a distinction Carey's view opposes - did any sparks begin to ignite. But there were so many issues floating about, and too short a time to develop them fully in a little over an hour.

The weekend's Leviathan, Naoise Nunn's monthly Dublin political cabaret on its holidays in Galway, by contrast, had more time to explore its subject - Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way, the Irish role in the first World War, and how, as Barry commented, "Ireland must be one of the most creatively amnesiac countries on earth". Barry read, as did poet Michael Longley (most movingly). Historian John Horne, unionist Steven King and Tadhg Moloney of the Royal Munster Fusiliers Association discussed the horrors of the war, and the unacknowledged, voluntary, contribution of Irishmen, 200,000 of whom died, and whose experience has been silenced.

The discussion ranged over the part of the Great War in the creation of new nations and in that context, the integral role of 1916 as part of the first World War, and the question of the moral justification of Ireland's "neutrality". From the floor, Michael D Higgins argued trenchantly against the glorification of death, and indeed of notions of empire, and the creation of a mindset of fear to buttress current arguments for war.

Barry ended the discussion with a telling and emotive point: Irishmen died to help create the conditions in which we live so comfortably; can we not at least acknowledge their sacrifice by remembering them with appropriate gratitude? The evening wrapped up musically, with related songs from Jimmy Crowley, June Tabor and an ebullient Liam Clancy.

Music events in the festival ranged from the audience worshipping at the altar of gospel singer Mavis Staples, to the Galway-based ConTempo Quartet's mini-fest, to Luke Haines's acoustic, to the Smyth sisters, Breda and Cora, whooping it up in Róisín Dubh. On Saturday, the city retreated 10 years for a nostalgia-fest from Galway band Toasted Heretic. At their peak in the mid-1990s, they have re-formed, a mite older, no wiser, and still great fun on stage. Frontman Julian Gough was as energetic as ever on tracks ranging from a pacey Lost and Found to Galway Bay, using the same £7.99 xylophone they played a decade ago.

But the strength of the festival programming - and outgoing director Rose Parkinson's strongest interest - is theatre. The DruidSynge project, years in the talking, months in the making, and the core of this year's festival, did not disappoint, and those who experienced Garry Hynes's day-long opus raved about its magic. Visiting shows included Paines Plough's new Enda Walsh, The Small Things, and Hollywood actor Andrew McCarthy performing Tennessee Williams's letters.

Aurelia's Oratorio came with great expectations for many people who had seen Aurelia Thierry's brother James's shows, Junebug Symphony and Les Veilles des Abysses, at the festival in previous years. This staggeringly beautiful show - which premiered at the Lyric in Hammersmith in January, and was directed and designed by Thierry's mother Victoria, Charlie Chaplin's daughter - did not disappoint: skilful, humorous, light of touch, it drew on century-old traditions of circus, illusion and physical gags, and the ghost of Thierry's grandfather seemed to be smiling from the wings.

Bringing the Thierry/Chaplin shows to Galway has surely been one of the highlights of Rose Parkinson's six years at the helm of the festival, as has the relationship she created with Chicago's renowned Steppenwolf theatre, an ongoing connection, though the company was not at the festival this year.

As she departs the festival, Parkinson herself singles out the development of new work as being what she is most pleased about, whether as festival co-productions or encouraging others to create new work, "making new stuff happen".

When she took over the festival she was keen to bring it from being mostly a receiving festival, to one initiating new work, and in that six years there is an impressive list to look back on, including The Drawer Boy, a production which brought John Mahoney (of Steppenwolf and Frasier fame) to Galway and then Dublin in a co-production with the Peacock; Denis Felix's photographs teamed with Joe Wall's music; Mark Doherty's Trad (now on its way to the Assembly Rooms for the Edinburgh Fringe); Bernard Pras's original supersize sculpture (the massive head of Tom Murphy at the Spanish Arch); Murphy's own play The Drunkard, a co-production with B*spoke; Stephen Dee's Freakshow, Nicholas Chevallier's projections on Galway buildings - and many more.

This year had solid quality and variety, and while overall it may not have hit the heights of some of her previous festivals, Parkinson's reign has been enormously fruitful, and she has crafted the festival into another league. It's a hard act to follow; it'll be interesting to see what direction incoming director Paul Fahy will take the festival.

But a story in this week's Galway Advertiser claims there is disquiet about the direction the 28-year-old festival has taken in recent years. It quotes an unnamed source as saying the Galway element of the festival is being diluted "almost to the point of extinction" another quote claims "They don't seem to rate Galway people. The programme seems to be designed 'for our Dublin friends' and reviews in the Guardian seem to matter more than those in local media, but it's locally they will sell tickets!"

Parkinson is uncharacteristically enraged by the way the source was not willing to say it openly and put their name to it. "I have no respect for that," she says. "They're attacking the festival for not being a different kind of festival to what it is," she adds, "with international, national and local work. If they put as much passion into creating new work as giving out about things, it'd be great. Whoever was quoted didn't look beyond the theatre programme - half the music this year has a Galway connection. It's just Philistinism."

The feel of the festival has changed, too. The city has grown but there's still a dearth of venue spaces at festival time. In recent years, emblematically, the Radisson hotel has been one of the venue mainstays - mostly for music, where one of its two spaces has a massive capacity. And these days - and nights - festival junkies are as likely to be found hanging out in its international glass and gleaming floored ambience than in more traditional arts festival haunts, smoking among the beer barrels behind the subterranean festival club at De Burgos.

Burntout was the latest show from the inventive young Galway company Catastrophe who have created many of their shows in non-theatre spaces. A 50-minute thriller set in a developer's office (the Taibhdhearc studio, again not a standard theatre space) and concerning the skulduggery around the redevelopment of a rough city centre area into apartmentland, the script by Josh Tobiessen is sharply written, even if occasionally veering into stereotypical territory. You can see where the story is going, but it nonetheless grips. A lot of that is down to the excellent performances, and the setting where the audience, mostly standing, eavesdrops on the action just a few feet away.

Strings, a dance show from Chrysalis Dance (see review, right), was a meld of ballet and a variety of contemporary styles, to music by Paddy Casey - who played live on some of the pieces. It sounds like an unlikely pairing but its oddness worked.

A disappointment was that Stuart Carolan's expected second play, following up Defender of the Faith, didn't make it on time for this year's festival; it's now pencilled in for 2006. And a row at the Galway Arts Centre which led to the early closure of the exhibition there clearly impoverished the festival's visual arts strand.

This year had noticeably fewer street or free entertainments; aside from the parade, the only external presence was in Claude Merle's life-size figurative sculptures in shop windows, forcing a gentle double-take. Of these, the grouping in the Living Room window worked best: a group of auld lads and characters, oddly still, sitting around in a large bar window.

DruidSynge was the most ambitious and acclaimed new work this year, but the reaction to the world premiere of Mauricio Celedon's Mother Courage was mixed to say the least.

Operating Theatre's unusual live installation at the Imperial Hotel was a joy. The historical footnote of a story - French actor/writer Antonin Artaud's 1937 trip to Ireland, where among other things he had a breakdown, and stayed at the Imperial without paying his bill - has hilariously Myles na Gopaleenesque elements as seen through the research documents you can read before entering a darkened space for the 12-minute experience.

Inside, Olwen Fouere, fabulously made up as Artaud, is confined within a large glass case, on the edge of sanity, watched by a torch-toting, nasty guard. The small number of viewers wanders around the intimate space, listening to Artaud's paranoid whisperings through earphones and watching him as if he was a caged beast. The experience is both moving and disturbing. Operating Theatre hope to bring this extraordinary experience to Cobh, another place which figures in Artaud's Irish trip.

Other new work, but at the other end of the scale, were two children's shows, Mark Doherty's joyous clown show, Playin' aRound, and The Giant, written by comic Barry Murphy and featuring himself and Doherty.

Characterised by sly humour for adults allied to a deep understanding of what tickles little funnybones, The Giant was as much about putting on a show as a show in itself, but it still kept the kids enthralled. At one stage the Giant refused to go on till he had been paid his promised fee, a bucket of money, so narrator Murphy toted a bucket around the audience to collect the five-cent pieces each child had been given on entering. "This is just like the Abbey," he grinned.