TALK ABOUT LIMBO. Where on earth is the new Arts Council? A chairperson and six members have been due for appointment since early August, and the feet-dragging by the Minister and department is getting ridiculous at this stage, writes Deirdre Falvey
The vacancies were scheduled and came as no surprise, and chairwoman Olive Braiden indicated months before her term was up that she wouldn't be staying on - so what's the delay? How hard can it be?
Life and activity seemed to stop during the summer, and then capitalism's meltdown and the Budget seem to have also melted the ability to do anything. Rumours have come and gone about various people being approached and turning down the chair (Bill Cullen was mooted this week in print, but denied by the department). The longer it goes on, the more embarrassing it gets. Is everyone with an interest in the arts and a bit of financial nous tied up with collapsing markets right now? An added challenge is that the chairperson's politics have to be government-approved.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and fills it with speculation and panic. The word is that there were more than 100 representations for positions on the council, so it seems to be sought after - but the longer the chair is open the greater the feeling that it may be regarded as a poisoned chalice. Olivia Mitchell (FG) put down a question in the Dáil this week asking "when the vacant positions on the Arts Council will be filled; the criteria that will be used in their selection; and if he will make a statement on the matter". The Minister replied that he was "currently considering the vacancies on the board of the Arts Council and hope to make an announcement in the immediate future". The latest indication is that the new members will be announced within a fortnight.
Everyone in the country is required to suffer now (but the most vulnerable and blameless shall suffer the most, it seems), so the arts are not alone, nor are they top of the needy list. But however the spin goes, the Arts Council had €85m to spend this year, and €76m next year - which is a big cut in a small organisation that invests in creativity and jobs all over Ireland. At Budget-time it was indicated that most of the cuts would be "internal", which could be interpreted as an attempt to pit the sector against the Arts Council. And it's really not clear how the department envisages such huge internal cuts. If the entire staff was sacked and the building abandoned it wouldn't save anything near the amount of money that the council has lost.
Staffing has increased at the council in recent years - but with department approval. And is it begrudgery when people note from the Budget figures that while there are cuts in Arts funding, the department itself largely escapes chops. The same cannot be said for arts companies, venues and artists; jobs will be lost, and there will be less creative activity all over Ireland next year. Deputy chairman Maurice Foley's strong reaction to the Budget can't have gone down well on Kildare Street (funnily enough, the Irish Film Board reaction was muted - what's the story behind the scenes there?). And his statement sent shivers through the council's clients, referring to how some funding decisions would have to be revisited - larger arts bodies who come under Regularly Funded Organisation funding, and indeed the Abbey, must wonder if they can depend on the investment commitments they have already been given.
Other funding decisions have been delayed. Both one-off project grants and annual funding grants were to have been decided in October and were put off. It's not clear if Monday's plenary session of the reduced-calorie Arts Council will make these funding decisions. Despite the seeming paralysis, the Minister's Dáil answer this week indicated that there were sufficient members to provide a quorum for decisions and that the deputy chairperson can take the place of the chairperson in the interim.
But all the same - get a move on.
•Forget all that praise for the striking cinematography of Steve McQueen's film Hunger and instead marvel at the contrary reaction in an amusingly over-the-top blog, on the Guardian of all unexpected places, by David Cox, who found himself wishing the inmates had been "properly" tortured. "I appreciate that my responses to this beautifully made film are uncharitable, immoderate and indeed reprehensible," he writes. "Yet, the men heroised in Hunger chose to murder my fellow citizens, on their own island and mine, indiscriminately and brutally, in pursuit of a cause I consider unimpressive."
Fair enough. And he's upset the film was made by a fellow Englishman, with an OBE no less, and funded by the UK Film Council. The blog, predictably, has generated a large number of comments (presumably not all from fellow travellers), and Cox undermines his case by going too far (he wonders why Britain's role in the Troubles isn't occasionally celebrated, for instance! "It was, after all, shaped by the call of duty, rather than misplaced nationalist fervour." Stiff upper lips, chaps). But still, he argues well and provocatively, and well done for sticking his head above the parapet. The blood-splattered hands are on both sides. And the blog is proof that the Guardian is a broad church (broader than Cox would have the UK Film Council be).
•Wexford Festival Opera has announced Donizetti's 1841 Maria Padilla, John Corigliano's 1991 The Ghosts of Versailles (in the European premiere of a newly-revised version by the composer), and Nino Rota's 1955 Il Cappello di Paglia di Firenze as the three operas to feature at the Wexford Opera House in next year's festival, which will run from October 15th to November 1st. There's been some speculation about what would be in the fabulous new opera house during the rest of the year, and some non-festival performances lined up for later this month are by the Russian Chamber Orchestra (November 17th) and Second Age Theatre Company (in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, from Thursday 27th), with a Sonraigh Youth Dance Festival Gala Evening presented by Myriad Dance (Saturday 29th).
•Willie White is off to the Abbey. What? Don't panic. It's not a revolution. The artistic director of the Project Arts Centre is currently on a Jerome Hynes Clore Leadership Fellowship, and as part of it he is on a three- month secondment at the Abbey Theatre, where he will explore possibilities for the development of the Abbey's Studio facility - up to now an informal set-up - discussing with national and international stakeholders how the studio can expand possibilities for Irish theatre and support professional development. He's at the Abbey until the end of January, but remains artistic director of Project, with general manager Niamh O'Donnell as acting chief executive.