The public meetings which are part of the Coopers and Lybrand/Indecon assessment of the Arts Council's Arts Plan, commissioned by Minister de Valera, ended last week. There were meetings in hotels in Ennis, Donegal, Monaghan, Castlebar, Kilkenny, Tallaght, Athlone and Cork. Coopers and Lybrand's Anne O'Connell yesterday declared herself very happy with "the quality of the feedback", which was, she said "very insightful". However, it has to be a matter of concern that so few people attended the meetings.
The Athlone and Cork meetings were, it seems, the bestattended, with about 40 people. I saw about 30 in Tallaght. The Arts Council Director, Patricia Quinn, said at the Arts Council's Consultative Forum in Limerick that there were 25 in Ennis, and 12 in Donegal.
The whole thrust of this consultation process was to involve the "general public", rather than the arts sector, and the dissemination of information and the placing of advertising reflected this priority. But how realistic was the expectation that this "general public" would get out in the evening to discuss the niceties of arts policy?
In the event the meetings were dominated by current and potential clients of the Arts Council. Why should this be a problem? The spokesperson at the Department explained that these people were not the focus because they had other forums in which to air their views. This focus also partly dictated the location of the one Dublin meeting, at 7 p.m. in Tallaght.
There should certainly have been a Tallaght meeting, given that its population is as large as that of Limerick and it has a vibrant arts scene; but then, there should also have been one in north Dublin, in the south-east and in the centre, given that Dublin counts for nearly a third of the population of the country. And if there was only to be one Dublin meeting, it should surely have been in An Lar, to which the bus and DART routes lead, and where so many people work. Reaching Tallaght at rush hour would be a pilgrimage of many buses for people in Donaghmede or Sandymount.
The department spokesperson said that the city centre is "very much seen as arts organisation territory", whereas Tallaght is "residential" , has "strong community arts activity", and the meeting provided an opportunity for people who "wouldn't have a voice otherwise". It is also, he said, easily accessible from Kildare and Wicklow. But is this an example of "regional access" leading to lack of access?
