The empty chair

I wrote last month that the arts locally had never been in such peril as we are now. As over 100 arts organisations representing the infrastructure that the Arts Council of Northern Ireland has nurtured over many decades and to whom they often refer as ‘the arts ecology’ here. A month since that blog post and nothing has changed - no letters of offer, no signed off budgets and therefore, no confidence in how to move forward. There are of course more problematic aspects where the word NO figures prominently - NO money - to pay salaries, overheads, insurance, artists fees etc and NO minister … even though we have a minister apparently…

You see, the Arts Council, to much fanfare, launched its 10 year strategy after an exhaustive process where they consulted art professionals, organisations and practitioners, and indeed engaged across governmental departments and agencies to synthesise a creative strategy to offer some guidance and shape a trajectory for the arts until 2034. And the department that sponsors the arts here,the Department for Communities, was, we were told,  of course approached in a timely way so that the minister would attend. And I believe he had said he would but on the day, NO show. So, NO budget, NO letters of offer, NO minister…just an empty chair where a minister charged with championing and supporting the arts should have been sitting. The chair of ACNI did say he had received apologies from the minister. But couldn’t someone from his staff have read his speech and given us some crumb of comfort that he at least acknowledged the sector??

Instead, we had Gary Lightbody, the mainstay of N Ireland's most prolific contemporary band, offer his thoughts on why the arts should be more valued than they are and to plead, on our collective behalf, that they receive the monies that we as a society deserve. He remarked in his excellent speech that when he meets politicians, the impression he’s left with is that they believe the arts are a luxury that cannot necessarily be afforded. Gary has shown leadership, he had demonstrated knowledge and understanding and offered support. But Gary is a singer in a succesful rock band, and unfortunately, Gary is not our minister for the arts.

But we do know that the current minister for the arts is very keen on asserting his demands that people here be treated exactly the same as citizens across the water in GB. We also understand that as a minister for the economy in the last administration, he was very keen to engage with the business sector and to celebrate their successes. So, why not come to the engage with the arts sector - one of the most efficient business sectors that there is - employing over 5,500 people, creating significant pathways for employment, training and R&D, assisting in facilitating a creative workforce of the future through multiple and wide-ranging schools programmes, and contributing actively to a healthier more engaged society for our young, our elderly, our minorities on the margins and supporting massively the evening economy and bolstering the cultural tourism offering. There is not a corner of life here where the arts are not actively contributing.

Pound for pound, the arts over-deliver and across the years, we’ve had to become expert in so many applied areas of working that an organisation can now switch from delivering a capacity-building training workshop to young artists, to working with groups with a whole range of physical and emotional challenges in the next breath and then celebrating new artistic work on an international stage that evening. There are over 100 annually funded organisations who are doing this type of work, day in day out. And the Arts Council was describing how we collectively see the arc of that work over the next 10 years in their strategy. Still NO show, NO minister.

Then the arts community starts to think - maybe it's US … are we the problem here? Are we?...

too sensitive about being the lowest funded region in the arts across the UK by 50%, or receiving only a fifth as much as they receive per head compared to the Republic …

Are we too progressive in that we challenge the status quo and insist that the arts and access to them is an inalienable human right…
Are we too confident in our skills that we can support people, amateur and professional, to have ambition to get up on that stage and show ourselves for the creative people we are…
Are we too empathic, working with so many people who cannot be reached by formal education, for whom life every day is a challenge and the chance to celebrate achievement is so so limited…
Or are we just too resilient, that having been treated as Cinderella across too many pantomimes, we are still here, decades later and now almost 2 months into a financial year and still have yet to receive any monies from our principal funder because the department can’t decide how poorly to fund this sector??   

And so as we wait on tenterhooks to find out how we support the working lives of 5,500 people, we can browse the net and celebrate the minster attending a variety of meetings elsewhere...