Council's position on the arts has nothing to do with money

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Written by Administrator

Wednesday, 05 September 2007

Dear Editor,
The late, great Peter Sellers did a radio sketch many years ago in which, as a plummy-voiced politician, he delivered a speech to a conference lasting 15 minutes. His phrasing and articulation were perfect - it was only at the very end that you realised he had said absolutely nothing at all, but had said it well.

Galway City Council have doubtless heard the Sellers tape and learned from it. Their 'statement' about arts' funding in Galway ('City Council defends contribution to the arts' – 29 August 29) is a non-statement. It clarifies nothing, emits no new relevant information and makes the Council look as if it is doing something.

Low rents, the beleaguered council spokesman says, are given to ‘the Arts Festival and Macnas for their offices at the Black Box’. Admirable. This does not explain how the council have consistently found reasons not to supply premises, low-rent or otherwise, for the Western Writers' Centre, in spite of the centre being part of the Development Plan for years - and why, surreally, the very phrase 'Western Writers' Centre' cannot be uttered in City Hall, but the phrase 'writers' centre' can! (No, I am not making up this Alice-in-Wonderland nonsense. I have this from a councillor.)

Nor does the statement explain how, or why, Galway Arts Festival can be ushered in to a session of a relevant council funding committee to deliver orally a presentation on the need for more funding - in the process, by-passing the arts office completely - while the rest of the arts' community is denied such access. The arrogance of that is breathtaking. Ironic that John Crumlish of the Arts Festival should be permitted column-space to call for even more money for the arts in Galway.

The problem of funding for the arts in Galway lies not with the amount of money available or even given, but the process by which this funding can be accessed and the city council's clear bias towards Macnas, the Arts Festival, Galway Arts Centre, Druid Theatre and the Town Hall Theatre, to the detriment of funding other arts' organisations.

There appears to exist an 'understanding' that these organisations should be funded generously and, indeed, automatically, while lesser organisations and groups grind their way through a form-filling process - and despise one another in the process - to dip in to a comparatively meagre trough of funding from the City Council Arts Office.

The arts office, by the way, is not given sufficient funding, and the principle is now established that for 'real' money, you walk in by another door. This is deplorable; the city council appear to have no respect for their own arts office, in spite of the enormous effort from that office to maintain and keep so many various groups going in Galway.

Until the city council grant every arts' body equal rights to access to funding committees and their like at City Hall, the problem is unlikely to be resolved.

Yet it is the fault of every other enthusiastic arts' group in Galway if the current situation of almost mediaeval right is permitted to exist. Grumbling in the pub is useless. And the council's college-bar antics, which permit one arts' group to have the stool at the bar while the rest of us sit on the floor must stop. The city council's present 'position' on the arts has nothing to do with money and everything to do with attitude and the complacency of so many of our 'smaller' arts' groups.

Sincerely,
Fred Johnston,
1 Carn Ard,
Circular Road,
Galway