In her first major press interview, Arts Council director Mary Cloake explains her low-key approach to Belinda McKeon
'You must have seen this office a good few times by now," Mary Cloake remarks, as she leads me into the room where much of her working day as director of the Arts Council is spent. Funnily enough, though, I don't think I've ever seen this office before. Previous interviews, with separate members of the Arts Council board or executive, and with Cloake's predecessor as director, Patricia Quinn, were always carried out in the anonymity of meeting rooms or in the reception area downstairs. This room is long and airy, with a dedicated space for discussion leading up to a large work area at the far end, modern Irish art on the walls and policy documents on the shelves. And on a narrow table inside the door, Cloake has assembled her treasures for the month - a collection of catalogues, publications and invitations which have earned themselves a place in her private exhibition until the next eye-catching item arrives in the post.
Cloake seems genuinely excited as she shows me through her current assortment, which includes a beautifully-produced Polish edition of work by Seamus Heaney and a fold-out flyer for the travelling exhibition Trunk, which stopped off in recent months in counties Roscommon and Cork. Leafing through them, she makes delighted exclamations while, behind her, the Arts Council press officer stands by. Maybe they planned this together as a suitable commencement to Cloake's first interview since taking up her post as director last September; maybe they didn't, and the press officer is silently wishing that Cloake would now get down to the business of strategy-speak of which Arts Council communications to the press are typically made. Either way, the officer has made it clear she'll be sitting in on this conversation.
This is an unusual move where the subject is the head of a bureaucratic organisation rather than an A-list celebrity requiring protection from indiscreet interrogation - but it's hardly surprising, given the low public profile which Cloake has maintained since her appointment as successor to Patricia Quinn, who resigned from the Arts Council in a storm of publicity in March 2004.
Whereas Quinn was frank and forthright in her dealings with the press, making frequent appearances in the letters pages to protest at views put forward by journalists or representatives from the arts community, Cloake has proven decidedly quieter on that front.
This, of course, can be attributed in part to the fact that the past year or so has brought relatively more bearable times for the arts, and consequently, less controversial times for the Arts Council. Though this year's funding levels were greeted with some disappointment in the sector - on paper, a 16 per cent boost in Government funding to the council looked like good news, but it translated mainly into minutely increased or standstill funding for the client organisations - there was none of the fury and derision which resulted when, in 2003, a major shortfall in funds from the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism led to cuts of up to 60 per cent in Arts Council grants.
Cloake has come, then, into calmer times. But the change may not all be external; an inside source hints that she, too, has made a momentous difference to the atmosphere at the Arts Council's Merrion Square offices; that her appointment effected an enormous release of tension and a freedom to communicate openly and easily both within the building and with outside contacts.
"She is recognised among the arts community as someone genuinely caring and passionate about arts and arts organisations," says Loughlin Deegan, executive producer of Rough Magic Theatre Company, "and as someone committed to making things better for them".
Though there is a certain thrill, for trainspotters of the arts variety, in observing how staggeringly different Cloake is to her predecessor in everything from demeanour to decision-making, it's only fair that she should resist too many questions about her departure, except to say that the news left her "very disappointed" and that Quinn was one from whom she had "learned a lot". Cloake is, after all, much more than simply Quinn's replacement, with, as she says herself, "a whole different job of work to be done".
But Cloake will readily own that she has established herself as a far less visible presence on the arts radar, and she'll argue that this is something with which she is content. Sections of the arts community, however, are less comfortable. Some fear that Cloake's benevolent nature, and the advantages attached, masks a "power vacuum at the top", according to one source. Within such a vacuum, the risk of partisan decisions is always high - and this source feels that the funding decisions for 2005 already reflect such partisanship.
That Olive Braiden, chairwoman of the Arts Council, has become the public face of the organisation in Quinn's wake does not bother Cloake, rather, she says, she regards Braiden's frequent media presence as a stroke of good luck. But in the arts community, there is a niggling feeling that Braiden is overstepping the mark as the voice of the Arts Council. The present consultation period with artists, and the elaborate staff structure left in place by Quinn, risk becoming nebulous concepts unless they are guided by a firm hand - and many feel that the task of such guidance should not fall to Braiden as chairwoman; the tough approach is, ultimately, the responsibility of the director. And it may be that only a director with a more outspoken tack and with greater public profile is what an Arts Council, in times still uncertain, needs.
Cloake seems not such a tough character. She has been regarded since her appointment as a safe pair of hands, and it is widely agreed that she works from no private agenda or ambition for herself. But she is well-practised in the bureaucrat's art of reinterpreting a question into her own terms. A query as to why she has kept her head so far below the parapet in her first six months produces a long address on different kinds of visibility in the arts, while a request to explicate the consultation process with artists which is currently under way as the first step towards a replacement for the shelved arts plan is met with talk of "concentric circles" of discussions and meetings.
At several points during the interview, the words on Cloake's lips wear the sheen of polished phrases from press releases or policy statements. The arts are at a "pivot point"; the council's approach to artists must be a "holistic" one'; the presence of the council is a valuable "checks and balances system".
For the most part, though, Cloake talks of the arts with a sincerity and enthusiasm that seems almost incongruous coming from one in her position; every argument seems grounded in a personal passion, and every point is supported by an example from arts practice that has moved or impressed her in some way. She snubs elitism by talking eagerly about the high artistic standards in evidence in recent television drama series, one of which, Love is the Drug, was made by the theatre company Calipo, and originated from a play by the same company. In such crossovers, she believes, an understanding of emerging audiences for the arts, and of the varied interests of artists and production companies, can be found. It's people from these pools whom she hopes to see introduced, through word of mouth and networking efforts, into the large-scale consultation process under way for the council's new strategy.
That they may not want to be included is a problem, however, which does not seem to have occurred to Cloake; part of her reason for applying for the job of director, she says, came from a desire "to be in there for the next stage" of arts practice, for "the new ways or media in which the art is going to come up". As she talks about a recent festival in Berlin which celebrated the work of young film-makers whohad produced work in the 12-second video clip allowed by their mobile phones, her eyes are positively glowing. And I sense she's not entirely joking when she expresses regret that the call for public submissions towards the council's new strategy can not yet facilitate submissions to be sent by text message.
Whatever about the challenges of tapping into arts movements which may refuse even to define themselves as such - as Cloake points out, the great artist of the next 10 years may be working in IBM rather than studying in art school or seeking a studio - Cloake's more familiar commitment to the "quiet work" done by smaller and regional organisations is bound to draw either a sigh of relief or a clamour for attention from those at local level who have recently been passed over for funding by the council.
Along with the growth and consolidation of larger cultural institutions, and the development of art forms - the mobile phones and laptops brigade again - that are at present peripheral but look certain to move to the core over the next decade, Cloake pinpoints the need for greater investment in regional arts scenes as a primary ambition. The need to support countrywide touring of theatre and dance productions, she says, is so obvious that it comes up in almost every discussion, and in the new strategy which the council is formulating to replace the defunct arts plan, this is among the "key tasks or agendas that absolutely need to be done, and done as soon as possible".
But to make a real difference at local level, investment will need to be substantial and sustained - and for such investment to occur, the council will have to negotiate a massive increase in funding from a Government which is careful, if not downright cagey, in its financial relationship to the arts. Cloake protests a confidence in local politicians and their interest in the arts which is somewhat difficult to agree with; even the memory of a Dáil peopled, during the 2003 debates on the Arts Bill, only by a handful of bored-looking party representatives on culture does nothing to shake her belief.
"They might not be able to make it to the Dáil, but they're going to go to an exhibition opening," she begins. But that's when they're looking for votes, I respond. What about the rest of the time?
"I think we have to look at the democratic process," responds Cloake. "If people are now starting to see that there are votes in going to openings, isn't that brilliant? That's 10 times better than a while ago, when nobody went. I think that politicians will follow people, because that's their job. And once the case is made that people are actually very interested in the arts, which they are, we can see that if we take into account good drama on television and the creative use of documentaries on radio, then I think I'm optimistic."
So the TDs may mumble a few words of support when elections are around the corner. And it's hard to deny Cloake's argument that the case for the arts can most powerfully be made by the artists and arts organisations themselves, who of necessity operate at a local level, whether that locality is an urban or a rural one. But the task of securing the funds will ultimately fall to the Arts Council. Cloake believes that this is a task at which it will succeed.
"It's certainly time for the State to look at upping its support for the arts a notch," she says. "The infrastructure is there, the organisations are there, and for relatively small investment, the State, the taxpayer, the citizen, can get more value for money. We have to make that case. And we will." But how, specifically? "I'll give you a specific example. Take the microlevel of production companies. If you look at a production company which is getting a grant, say of €100,000, from the council and does one show a year. If we gave them, say, an extra €20,000, they could do two shows a year. So for that increase you'd get a 100 per cent increase in productivity."
As well as the economic case for an increase, Cloake says, there are arguments stemming from the reality of a multicultural society, in which the arts offer an invaluable glimpse into the experiences of others, and from Ireland's ability to reinterpret, on its own cultural terms, global influences. "If Ireland can say, well, it doesn't really matter what happens in terms of shifts of world political or economic power, that we know that our arts are strong enough to absorb any influences, reinterpret them and own them, then I think there are really good social, political, economic and cultural cases for the arts," she argues, "then I'm confident." It's hardly a new line. But Cloake believes in it absolutely. The trick now is to translate belief into backing.
