WHILE THE FOCUS of attention on recent arts funding has been on the announcement that the Abbey Theatre had secured €30.2 million over the next three years, other arts venues and organisations received news of their grants for next year with far less fanfare. The majority of these Regularly Funded Organisations (RFOs) received standstill grants which are, in effect, decreases when inflation is taken into account.
A few got word of significant rises and some were in for a surprise that came either in the form of very good or very bad news. First, the bad news: Storytellers Theatre Company was stripped altogether of funding. On the other hand, 15 other organisations were told they were being brought in under an arrangement similar to the Abbey's much-coveted three-year funding scheme.
What is probably most surprising about this return to multi-annual funding is that it comes at a time when levels of funding from the Department of Arts seem far less certain than has been the case in many years.
Apart from having €482,000 removed from its budget for this year as part of the Government's recent emergency cutbacks across departments, the council's previous attempt at implementing three-year funding some years ago fell apart when arts expenditure was hit by the last and lesser economic downturn.
Storytellers plans to appeal the decision to drop all its funding - in the current year it got €263,670 and the company has been an Arts Council client for the past 14 years. "A state of shock" is a mild way of describing the mood in the company.
In contrast, the contemporary music group Crash Ensemble was one of the few grants recipients to get anything like a significant increase, almost 20 per cent, going from €207,834 this year to €247,834. Similar increases came the way of Music for Galway, Filmbase and Note Productions. Wexford Festival Opera, about to open its new theatre, received €1,389,100, an increase of almost 17 per cent, but as well as the annual festival, it now has this major new venue to operate throughout the year.
In all 15 festivals, music and literary organisations and venues have been informed that the council will in future support them through multi-annual funding, a change that will allow the kind of decision-making and forward planning that is very much necessary in the arts.
The beneficiaries of the scheme will be the Dublin Theatre Festival, Galway Arts Festival, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Opera Theatre Company, Opera Ireland, Music Network, Irish Literature Exchange, Irish Film Institute, Irish Chamber Orchestra, National Association for Youth Drama, the Ark, Fire Station Artists' Studio, Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts, Rough Magic Theatre Company, Druid Theatre Company and the Gate Theatre.
The promise of three-year funding is unlikely to come as much consolation to those three theatre companies when they compare their grants to the Abbey's annual €10 million plus. The Gate will receive €1.1m, a 6.4 per cent increase; Druid €920,540, a 7 per cent increase; and Rough Magic €685,420, a 5.2 per cent increase.
Galway Arts Festival gets €573,000, which matches exactly its figure for the festival just ended, and Dublin Theatre Festival, which announced this year's programme during the week, receives a 5 per cent increase. In total, more than €28 million was dispersed in this round of funding
West Cork windfall
With 205 architectural companies so far registering an interest in the design competition for the West Cork Arts Centre's new premises in Skibbereen, the centre has been celebrating news of a hefty contribution to its €4.5 million building costs, writes .
The €375,000 pledge from William and Judith Bollinger announced late last week almost halves the outstanding balance for the fund, with €1.5 million already gained through the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism Access II programme and another €1.4 million coming from Cork County Council.
"It was just a dream that a philanthropist would step in to help us raise money," says
the centre's publicity and exhibitions co-ordinator Susan Harrington. "This is a fantastic bonus and with another bit of luck perhaps someone else will now want to be part of our success story!"
The Bollingers are recently naturalised Irish citizens with a home in the Schull area of west Cork. They are supporters of such cultural and artistic events as the reopening of the jewellery gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the British Library and the Vatican Museums, and have promised to match all donations to the building development fund up to their guaranteed amount.
William Bollinger was a recognised supporter of the British Labour Party and is the founding partner of fund managers Egerton Capital Ltd, while Judith Bollinger is the chairwoman of ABG Sundal Collier and a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania.
Their presence in west Cork, where they have already been quietly supporting the Schull Community College, and the generosity of their contribution to the arts centre, is seen elsewhere as a reminder of the changing times in the southwest. This is no longer a landscape of country cottages and alternative lifestyles, but of distinguished homes in an area where, as one observer noted, every hedge had a fund manager behind it.
It is accepted that this is not a new phenomenon, that there was always wealth in west Cork, where part-time residents, especially, enjoy the kind of seclusion which allows them to disappear into the hills while still keeping up an undemanding social life.
But this contribution is also an indication of the achievements of the West Cork Arts Centre, which has gained a sturdy professional reputation over the 20 years of its existence. Its demanding standards and progressive policies, especially under its director Ann Davoren, formerly of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, are acknowledged throughout the country.
Although officially multidisciplinary in approach, its concentration is on modern and contemporary visual arts, with a youth programme that includes theatre, dance and art. As a commissioning venue it has an added local importance, and in national terms it is, for example, one of only four venues to which the RHA is taking its touring exhibition The Plinian Sponge, maybe?
It is regarded as an example of what can be achieved on limited resources by a dedicated staff. The closing date for submissions for the first phase of the architectural competition is September 5th, and the winning design will be announced next January, with a projected completion date of 2010, just in time for the centre's 25th anniversary.
Anyone who has seen that elegant and lyrical French film Summer Hours, currently showing in the very impressive new Lighthouse cinema in Smithfield, might have missed the Irish connection in this movie - the melodic music that accompanies this particularly intelligent narrative was composed by the blind Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan. O'Carolan, who was born near Nobber in Co Meath in 1670, was considered our national composer. His tune Loftus Jones is performed to wonderful effect by former Incredible String Band member Robin Williamson playing Celtic harp.
Williamson also contributes two of his own compositions, Gwydion's Dream and Little Cloud, to the soundtrack.
artscape@irish-times.ie