Martin Drury is leaving his post as director of the Ark Children's Cultural Centre in Temple Bar. We didn't read the signs right. During the celebration of five years of the Ark in September, Harry Browne was so impressed with Drury's energy and enthusiasm he reckoned he'd be in the job of director for a good while yet.

"Like everyone else," Drury told Browne in the interview. "I look at The Irish Times on Friday to see if the job of my life is coming up."

Browne surmised: "When the conversation rolls back to the ideas that govern his work here, you get the feeling he might just be in the dream job already."

Drury says it was indeed his dream job, but, he feels, "you can be in a job too long". Although the Ark has been open less then six years, Drury has been working on its development since 1992.

He is not going to another job, but instead wants to take some time out. In fact, in retrospect, he hinted at this in the September interview when he said: "I almost want to take a year off just to think . . . about the relationship between the presentness of art and the presentness of childhood." Achieving his own sense of "presentness" will be his first task; he admits he's a workaholic who's barely taken a break in his 20 years in arts administration. However, he admits that he will, in time, "surface again" in some other role.

The advertisement for the job of director will appear in this newspaper tomorrow. Drury is making himself available until June, should the process of replacing him take that long.

He admits that it may be difficult for the incumbent to step into his shoes, because Drury was the founding director. What he doesn't add is that his are very big shoes indeed. It is largely his achievement that the Ark, the only purpose-built children's arts centre in Europe, is such a success, the boast of the whole Temple Bar initiative, and perhaps Ireland's only boast in the area of recreational provision for children.

If Liam Lawlor is in Mountjoy tonight, he won't be stuck for entertainment. Inmates are due to stage a production of Hatchet by Heno Magee at the Glengarriff Parade Training Unit, directed by drama teacher Frank Allen.

The supervising teacher, Stephen O'Connor, emphasises the role drama has in the prison curriculum in "addressing issues about offending behaviour". Hatchet, written in the 1970s, is perfect material, in that it tackles "the issue of violence and the culture of the unemployed . . . about people trying to go against that trend".

With a new sort of prisoner finally making it to Mountjoy, maybe it's time for a change of curriculum, to include plays like Caryl Churchill's Serious Money and David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross . . .

Madeline Boughton, the Abbey's head of public affairs, is leaving in March to join the Draiocht Arts Centre in Blanchardstown as head of public relations and marketing. She says the big difference at the new venue is that she will be able to oversee the box office and front-of-house area, which is "a more holistic approach, rather than here where there is a lot more structure in place and it's not as easy physically or psychologically to have input in those areas".

The main attraction at Draiocht is, she says, "a clean slate . . . being able to build in customer care strategies from the beginning."

She is known to have a good working relationship with Richard Wakeley, the executive director of the Abbey, whose partner, Teerth Chungh, is the new director of Draiocht. She began her Abbey job three years ago when Patrick Mason was artistic director, but she denies that she was more part of Mason's team than of Ben Barnes's, saying she had had a good year working with Barnes: "It's been a learning process for both of us."

The Project Arts Centre has announced three new appointments: Jennifer Traynor will be the new general manager, Siobhan Colgan will be the new press officer and Niamh O'Donnell, previously of Arthouse, will become artistic programme co-ordinator.

The changes will do nothing to assuage anxiety about the impending lack of a visual arts officer at the centre. Valerie Connor is due to leave at the end of the month; her contract is not being renewed and, despite an artist's petition and ructions at board level, there is no sign of the position being advertised.

Jennifer Traynor replaces Tom Coughlan, who has gone to the Gaiety School of Acting. Siobhan Colgan replaces Nicola Swanton, who has gone to the City Arts Centre. Niamh O'Donnell's new role will be as administrative support to the programming team made up of artistic director Kathy McArdle and Tim Brennan (also late of Arthouse), curator of talks and critical events. If Valerie Connor leaves and is not replaced, it looks as if Tim Brennan's "critical events" will replace the visual arts programme.

Janice McAdam, director of public affairs at the Project, denies there is a downgrading of the centre's visual arts programme going on, and calls it instead "a restructuring of the programming team". She won't comment further, saying: "Negotiations around the restructuring are still ongoing at board level."

Meanwhile, the talks and critical events are kicking off this year with a series on "Theatre, Culture, Creativity", in association with UCD Drama Studies Centre. The four-part lecture series asks the question: "As society changes and our assumptions, often unspoken, shift and evolve, what role is there for the makers of theatre in our unsettled and unsettling world?"

The talks take place in the Project's Cube on Wednesdays at 6 p.m. Patrick Mason, former artistic director of the Abbey Theatre, will speak next Wednesday; Ivo Van Hove, theatre director and artistic director of the Holland Festival, will speak on February 7th; Medb Ruane, journalist, broadcaster and critic, will speak on February 14th; and the film and theatre writer, Anne Devlin, will speak on February 21st. Contact 01-6976622 for further information.

Druid Theatre Company's series of semi-staged productions of new plays, known as "Druid Debuts", which has been nominated for an Irish Times/ESB Special Judges' Award, continues next week with a production of The Welcome, by the young Dublin playwright, Gerald Murphy. It's described as "a lively comedy drama about four fractious brothers, two of whom are involved in money-laundering". The show runs from Tuesday to Thursday at Druid Lane Theatre, Galway at 8 p.m. For details, contact Druid at tel: 091-568617 or at its website, boxoffice@druidtheatre.com

The West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, reopens on Saturday with the annual Children's Arts Festival. From 2.30 p.m. until 5 p.m., there will be non-stop entertainment for children, and the gallery will be filled from floor to ceiling with paintings, drawings, prints, models and sculptures by young people from all over West Cork. Other events during the festival include storytelling, dance, animation and mask-making, plus productions by Turbo Prop of Rudolf's Wonderful World and by Spring Onion Puppet Company of Androcles and the Lion.

Information can be obtained on 028-22090.

Kilkenny VEC's lecture series, "Forever Changing", will take place on six successive Thursdays at Butler House at 6 p.m. It begins on Thursday, January 25th with a lecture by Welsh historian Peter Stead on "Culture and Politics in the New Wales" and continues on February 1st with a lecture by Micheal O Suilleabhain entitled "A River of Sound - the Changing Course of Irish Music".

If you're a comedian with Irish roots, you can register with Toby Hadoke (tel: 0044-1617050801) to compete in one of the Tuesday heats at Scruffy Murphy's pub, Fallowfield, Manchester, in the Manchester Irish Festival Comedy Competition 2001.