The Arts Council has announced its final set of funding figures for 2008, with €20 million going to 143 organisations and 34 local authorities under its Annual Funding programme.
This category of funding is mostly of medium sized organisations. The council also indicated that some of its additional funding this year, including a supplementary €3 million, is to go towards touring and community music projects.
In the funding decisions released, Far Cry Productions, Gerard Mannix Flynn's company, gets annual funding for the first time of €75,000.
Similarly, ArtPolonia, an international cultural exchange project for Polish art, is also funded for the first time, at €20,000.
A new resource organisation for traditional arts in Donegal, Cartlann Cheol Thír Chonaill, has also been granted €30,000 for the first time.
Local authorities will get a total of €2,962,000.
Many of the organisations funded were looking for larger levels of grant-aid than they received - the Arts Council received 209 applications for this annual funding programme, seeking more than €37 million for operating costs and artistic programming.
Arts Council director Mary Cloake said there was significantly more demand from organisations looking for annual funding for good work.
"If we had it, we could easily have spent €800,000 more on these organisations, many of whom are doing fantastic work on modest budgets," she said.
This year has seen a change from what was almost a Christmas tradition - the announcement of all of the council's Revenue funding decisions for arts organisations the following year, immediately before Christmas (and latterly in mid-January).
The Arts Council instead made some initial funding decisions earlier in the year, before it knew its own funding from the budget, in order to allow companies and artists time to plan activity for next year.
Money for annual programming grants and "Regularly Funded Organisations" (key organisations in the arts), were announced earlier in the year, so this week's annual funding completes the picture.
In the budget the Arts Council was allocated €82.1 million for 2008, and in a supplementary estimate got €3 million extra for 2007 from Minister for the Arts Séamus Brennan.
This brings the total funding for 2007 to €83 million - but this extra €3 million will in fact be spent next year. In effect the Arts Council will have just over €85 million to spend in 2008; it had looked for €100 million.
In a statement after the budget, Mr Brennan pledged an increase in funding before February 2009.
Of the extra €3 million in funding this year, the Arts Council says approximately €750,000 will be additional money to support touring, including €180,000 towards the Gate Theatre's plans to present an extensive national tour of Waiting for Godot in the autumn, an additional €100,000 each to two networks of regional arts venues, Nasc and Nomad, and €50,000 extra help for touring traditional arts.
This funding is additional to upcoming spring 2008 tours funded by the council's touring experiment, including Rough Magic's production of The Taming of the Shrew and Red Kettle's tour of Boy Soldier.
The Arts Council says there's a pressing need to fund access to musical instruments, and another €500,000 of the extra €3 million will go towards community music, towards establishing a new community music scheme.
The scheme will gauge the need for investment in instruments for professional music, and directly support brass, pipe, and fife and drum bands and other community-based music.
Any other funds will be allocated in January, and the council hopes to have about €800,000 available to top up funding already announced for regularly funded organisations and some other bigger arts organisations, many of which were dismayed at an almost blanket increase of 3.4 per cent which was announced in October.
Funding: significant increases
Some of the significant increases in funding include the International Dance Festival, which gets an increase of €25,000 over the €430,000 it received in 2006; Dance Ireland, which has been very successful in its new home in Foley Street, has an increase of €29,000 (from €384,000 to €413,000).
Clifden Community Arts Week has increased from €79,000 to €86,000, Dedalus Press from €80,000 to €95,000; the Stinging Fly journal goes from €38 ,000 to €46,500; Gallery Press from €159,000 to €167,000; the Historical Harp Society of Ireland goes from €12,500 to €17,500, and the National Chamber Choir increases €20,000 from €345,000 to €365,000.
Alternative Entertainments, which promotes visual art and traditional arts in the Tallaght area, increases from €177,000 to €187,000. Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy in Clare has an increase of €10,000 in annual funding, but is also getting another €32,000 for capital funding, to help address the venue difficulties that the festival has had.
Theatre has had perhaps most funding changes this year. A few companies have had a drop in funding support this year, including Barabbas (from €270,000 to €220,000); Bedrock (from €250,000 to €235,000); and Upstate Theatre Project in Drogheda (from €160,000 to €140,000).
But there were gains, too, in theatre: the refurbished small New Theatre on Essex Street in Dublin, goes from €12,000 to €45,000; Calipo is up from €95,000 to €130,000; and two Cork companies, Corcadorca up from €230,000 to €240,000 and Meridian from €205,000 to €240,000.
