Ahead of the publication of the Book of Estimates, let's remember the importance of the arts, writes Olive Braiden.
Funding for the arts, like every other sector, is a live issue for the Government now. In mid-November the Minister for Finance will publish his first Book of Estimates in which he will set out what the Government intends to spend in 2005. For artists the decision will be critical. On it will hinge the capacity of Irish artists to bring to fruition thousands of projects that they have nurtured for months, even years. It's a very, very personal matter for them and I passionately believe it is a very important matter for all of us, too.
Art is life-giving. It is not just the product of learnt skills or technical expertise, though skill and expertise can be very important. More than almost any other way of life, art requires the artist to give of themselves. A painting, a work of music or of dance leaves almost no room for reserve, no place to hide. It requires not only talent to be successful and skill to be produced, it requires remarkable bravery or foolishness, or both, to be even begun.
We all have the opportunity and the privilege to be touched and challenged by art, by its beauty and its bravery. We can be lifted out of the everyday, we can be moved away from the commonplace and we can see anew that which, from over-familiarity, we had ceased to see at all.
Art is part of our personal heritage and part of our national patrimony. It is, in ways we do not even realise, an intimate part of our lives. The Arts Council's role is to work with and for artists.
Our job is to make their job possible and easier. Our capacity to do that is largely determined by the resources at our disposal. In a situation where the Government must make difficult decisions between competing demands, we are speaking for artists and are making the case for art.
That case in a single word is art itself. In a world where the empirical is everything, artists challenge policy-makers and the wider community alike to step outside a thought world that is not just constraining - it is often suffocating. In a society that is becoming ever more materialistic and homogenised, art has a vital role to play. The artist in our community has the prophetic role of challenging our learnt and often lazy assumptions. The artist is, if even by default, a leader, not a follower. It is an extraordinary thing that in a society increasingly defined by its individualism that we have so few leaders, so few who stand up and who stand out. Through their work, through the beauty of art, artists always take that risk and stand up to be counted.
One recurring Irish myth is about the hospitality and special place Ireland offers to its artists. Through the 82 years this State has existed, Ireland has not been a hospitable place for artists. While I believe this is slowly changing, we still have a long way to go.
By being open to and supportive of the artists living with us in our community, we enrich ourselves. By deciding as a country that we believe that art matters, we enhance the heritage we will bequeath to our children. Music, dance, books, paintings and plays change lives and shape societies. They are the oxygen we need to breathe to become fully alive.
In 2004, €52.5 million was set aside by this State to fund artists through the Arts Council. After a very serious cut in 2003, this amount represented a welcome possibility to stabilise many organisations that otherwise would have gone under. It allowed us to run to stand still. In the arts, small amounts of money are made to go a long way; they have to.
The effect of the financial cut in 2003 was that over 1,000 part-time jobs were cut; productions and tours were cancelled; artists who hoped to work at home had again to emigrate to continue working.
Reversing this drain of talent and imagination has been the work of the first full year in office of this new Arts Council.
As chairwoman of the council I acknowledge the successful effort of our Minister, John O'Donoghue, in making the case in the Government for artists.
I know that he is completely engaged again in explaining to his colleagues why even in the context of legitimately large demands from sectors like health and education, that we as a society need to make space and practical support available for Ireland's artists.
The fact is that the demands on the resources of the Arts Council are double what we can meet.
Many artists and organisations that are funded are on subsistence funding only. They have the talent and the ideas to do so much more.
We should be clear too that while a very small minority of artists earn large sums of money, most artists struggle to earn a living wage. Without the subsidy of an Arts Council grant, most art is not sustainable.
While some in the arts might regret it, the fact is that in Ireland today being an artist is a vocation, not a career.
The challenge for us as a society is whether we have the imagination and generosity to respond to people who are prepared to step out of the mainstream and speak to us through their art of the public issues and the private emotions that otherwise we will listen for in vain.
The arts are also an important part of our social and economic fabric.
The modestly paid jobs of some of our most talented people depend on public funding for the arts.
It is literature and music that evoke the richest images of Ireland abroad.
In making its case for increased funding, the Arts Council says to the Government and to the wider community that the case for art is not that it is a luxury, but that in a thinking, feeling and civilised society, art is a necessity.
Olive Braiden is chairwoman of the Arts Council