A NEW plan aimed at promoting arts in schools hit a stumbling block on its publication yesterday, with Minister for Arts Martin Cullen warning that funding for its implementation will be more difficult to secure in the current economic climate.
The plan, published yesterday by the Arts Council, made the case for giving schoolchildren increased exposure to the arts.
Points of Alignment, a report of the Special Committee on Arts and Education, was presented to Mr Cullen and the Minister for Education and Science, Batt O’Keeffe.
It makes five key recommendations on how to bring the arts to the country’s school-going population.
They include the establishment of a dedicated national arts-in-education development unit staffed by up to eight people, increased resourcing for existing programmes, and the development of an arts-in-education website.
Arts in education involves artists of all disciplines visiting schools to present work and run projects in which they collaborate with young people.
It also includes visits by schools to galleries, theatres and arts centres for exhibitions, performances and workshops of all kinds, designed to enrich the school experience of thousands of young people throughout Ireland.
Speaking at the launch of the report, Mr Cullen said exposure to the arts at an early age would benefit a person for life. But he said that securing funding for the report’s recommendations “would not be as easy as it was in the past”.
He said: “We’re in more difficult times. But we may look at existing programmes that are maybe not delivering what this programme could deliver.”
Olive Braiden, chairwoman of the Arts Council, said arts provision for young people was the “single biggest fault line in our cultural provision”.
She said: “Hundreds of thousands of young people for generations to come stand to gain if the strategic changes recommended in the report are made.”
The Special Committee on the Arts and Education was set up in 2006 with a brief to identify areas where the arts could be brought into schools, and to recommend how this could be achieved.