Circus seeks funds to avoid closure

Fossett's Circus has accused the Arts Council of penalising it for being a "popular, non-elitist" art form. Ireland's 115-year-old circus is "99 per cent certain" to close this year unless it receives funding of about €80,000, the Oireachtas arts committee was told.

Circus directors attacked the Arts Council for being "patronising and dismissive" in its approach to the circus, which has toured Ireland for 35 weeks of the year every year since it was founded.

Its managing director, Mr Edward Fossett, said that under the 2002 Arts Bill, circus would finally achieve recognition as an art form, "but until the elitist attitude of those who disburse public funds is changed traditional Irish circus will die".

The committee was told yesterday that the Arts Council had told the circus that no revenue funding would be made available to traditional circus, because it was not a "contemporary" art form, but in Europe it was a cherished art form which received state support.

Mr Charles O'Brien said Fossett's sympathised with opera and dance companies which had had their council funding cut, but they played to small, socially elite audiences.

Fossett's Circus played to over 80,000 people, most of whom would never attend any other form of theatre no matter how much the Arts Council might wish otherwise, he said. Fossett's Circus was very often a child's first, perhaps only, experience of live performance.

The committee chairwoman, Ms Cecilia Keaveney, said there were other forms of funding, as there was a rural, community and Gaeltacht aspect to this.

Senator Brendan Daly (FF) deplored the attitude of the Arts Council and said the committee should seek some explanation from it.

Mr O'Brien said the representatives of the council had been "nice, polite and well-meaning but have wrung their hands" and cited budget cuts. Fossett's had received no funding in its history apart from two once-off grants, and circus as a traditional art form was being "excluded from the party".

Traditional circus did not conform to a selective view of art as held by the Arts Council, and Fossett's was concerned that the council would simply redefine existing organisations and theatre companies as having a circus element.

Four actors on a stage in Temple Bar putting on red noses did not mean they were performing circus, he said, but there would be claims of dedication to circus purely to access funding.

The Arts Council supported dance, music, opera, the lyric arts and street theatre but not circus. It should "redress this inequity now before the only circus seen in Ireland comes from England".

When marine safety was discussed it was suggested that wardens should be introduced on beaches, to regulate driving schools, horse-riding and jet-skiing, the arts, sports and tourism committee was told. Mr Jim Glennon, the Fianna Fáil TD for Dublin North, said it was an issue that should be addressed urgently and could be done profitably and easily enforced.

His party colleague, Senator Labhrás Ó Murchú, suggested that a penalty-points system for water safety could be introduced similar to that applying to driving. People were more inclined to adhere to the rules if they knew there was a good chance they could be caught.

They were responding to the director-general of the new Maritime Safety Directorate, Mr Maurice Mullen, who told the committee he had received some 100 submissions about the regulations concerning the wearing of life-jackets on certain vessels. Some sports organisations said life-jackets restricted their activity.

Ms Fiona O'Malley, the Progressive Democrat TD for Dún Laoghaire, said it was "mad" to have rules where a person did not have to wear a life-jacket on a friend's boat but would have to on other vessels.