Making a bee-line for the picket line

ArtScape: Most of those working in the arts in Ireland do so under erratic and unstable conditions, are appallingly badly paid and have little professional security.

Organisations are poorly funded and often don't know from one year to the next how much money they'll have to work with. Given this, it's amazing, sometimes, the quality of work that is produced.

Ironically, we're fêted worldwide as an artistic and literary country - as a nation, we are never done slapping ourselves on the back for what a great and creative bunch we are. That's quite aside from the large financial returns which the arts make to Ireland - not just in direct and indirect taxes and international earnings, but in terms of the role arts festivals, summer schools and other events have on local tourism, and the large income they draw to so many areas of the country (often with little reciprocation from the local businesses that make such huge gains).

So the news of the strike by freelance arts workers in France is especially interesting (see panel below). And take note of the salary level of jobbing actors there!

The strikes are threatening the massive contribution that festivals and other events make to the French economy. The French are great protesters so goodness knows how they'd react if creative people and arts organisations were treated as badly as they are in Ireland.

Why, in almost all areas of Irish life do we silently accept gross Government mismanagement, uncontrolled price increases, a system slowly falling apart - as well as pitiful State investment in the arts and a social welfare system that is unable to comprehend or allow for the erratic nature of working in the arts?

The French situation does make one speculate: what would

happen if artists and organisations in Ireland decided to say stop - and go on strike?

Rapper's delight

Great reportage in the British papers this week of Seamus Heaney's declaration of respect for Eminem's "verbal energy", which he said had "sent a voltage around a generation". His comments were in answer to a question at the Prince of Wales Educational Summer School in Norwich, where he was a guest: he was asked if there was a figure in popular culture who aroused interest in poetry and lyrics in the way that Dylan and Lennon did in the 1960s and 1970s. "There is this guy Eminem. He has created a sense of what is possible." Wednesday's London Independent quoted extensively from A Lough Neagh Sequence, alongside Mr Shady's Just Don't Give a F--k, and also quoted Seamus's son, journalist Mick Heaney's surprise and the comment that his father was "not someone who tries to be trendy and the fact that he's responded shows that he's twigged [Eminem's\] energy". The comments even made the Guardian's Pass Notes section, one question of which was "Do Heaney's words have anything in common with Eminem's? Heaney specialises in peat bogs, ancient history and rural labour. No mention of drugs, rape or trailer parks. Mind you, his celebrated modernisation of Beowulf gets pretty nasty." Let's hear it for the power of the word.

Festival season

Given that an all-out arts strike doesn't look likely here soon, the festival season is getting into full gear, with the launch this week of Kilkenny (see On The Town, above), Claudia Woolgar's first festival, having taken over Maureen Kenelly's impressive mantle only in January.

The Boyle Arts Festival runs from July 25th to August 1st featuring Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, who'll perform along with Mel Mercier and Kenneth Edge at King House on Wednesday July 30th, as well as the annual group exhibitions. Those who request a programme are entered in a draw for a cruise with Tara Cruisers. The box office is at King Boyle House (079-630851) or www.boylearts.com.

In the meantime, the third Clonmel Junction festival begins today with world music from Cape Verde's Teofilo Chantre (also in Dublin this weekend as part of Dublin Jazz Week) and continues for nine days with other music including Dutch band De Wereldband, The Walls, and David Kitt, while international theatre highlights are Pip Utton's solo show Only the Lonely, and American comedy Goner (which is also coming to Earagail in Donegal). The Clonmel Junction box office is at 052-82899 or www.junctionfestival.com.

The ever more ambitious Earagail, which runs from July 7th to 20th, features the Saigon Water Puppet Theatre (see W6), Circus Ronaldo from Belgium, Roy Hargrove and the RH Factor in their only Irish performance and a special night of Donegal fiddling.

•  Information from 074-9120777, www.donegalculture.com

Meanwhile, Galway is already in pre-festival mode as lots of the participants arrive in town for final preparations - Barrabas are in situ with rehearsals for Hurl, French artist Bernard Pras is already creating his installations, Steppenwolf arrive from Chicago next week, as does The Drunkard gang (but only from Dublin!), and Macnas is in full swing with Mysteries rehearsals. Daniel J. Travanti (remember Hill Street Blues?) has pulled out of the Pittsburg Irish and Classical Theatre production of Major Barbara, but his replacement, Bingo O'Malley, has been well reviewed in the show since it opened in Pittsburgh. Another Proclaimers gig has been added, and an additional Waterboys show looks likely. It's runs from July 15th to 27th and you can get information from 091-566577 or www.galwayartsfestival.com

And Farmleigh may not be a festival as such, but deserves credit for the impressive programme for the public lined up to run until the end of October at the State B&B in Dublin's Phoenix Park. As well as the RTÉ Farmleigh Proms and other music in July, there are garden events in August, food in September and writers in October. And even better, all of the events are free. You do require tickets, however, for each event and these must be applied for in advance and will be allocated via supervised lottery.

• Tel: 01- 8157200 or go to www.farmleigh.ie for details.

And furthermore . . .

"Artists working in community contexts" is a tired phrase used by artists, curators, programmers and commissioners to describe artistic activity involving engagement with the public or a community. It's also the subject of Outside the Box - Art and Public Domains, the first seminar in Raising the Issues, organised by the Civil Arts Inquiry in association with the Sculptors' Society of Ireland, which takes place next Wednesday (July 9th) at City Arts Centre, Moss Street, Dublin. The seminar brings together programmers and practitioners and addresses the relationship between contemporary art practice and society.

• Admission free (space limited) - book with Anya Stafford at City Arts Centre on 01-677 0643 or e-mail info@cityartscentre.ie

Next Friday Lady Camilla Panufnik, widow of the Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik (1914-91), gives a pre-concert talk on his work at 7.15 p.m., before a performance of his Sinfonia Sacra by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in the NCH. Admission free for all ticket holders.

• Bookings at 01-4170000.

French festivals hit a not-so-entertaining hitch

At week's end, French Minister of Culture, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, was locked in negotiations with representatives of nearly 100,000 freelance actors, musicians, dancers and technicians, known as intermittents du spectacle.

Strikes and disruptive protests by the intermittents have already shut down dozens of summer arts festivals, theatre performances and concerts. The fate of the most prestigious summer event, the Avignon theatre festival, which is due to start on Tuesday, is still uncertain.

The entertainment workers rejected a move to reduce the duration of their unemployment benefits from 12 months to eight, and to base payments on work completed over 10-and-a-half months instead of 12. Unions say the change will force up to a third of France's freelance performers to abandon the profession. Advocates of the reform say the present system is untenable, with the entertainers' special statusaccounting for half of the unemployment system deficit. Between freelance work and the dole, an established but not well-known French actor easily earns €4,500 per month. Even after the reform, the system will remain the most generous in Europe.

The striking entertainers have received verbal support from Isabelle Adjani and Catherine Deneuve. But, Deneuve warned: "don't expect the public to sympathise with you, because you do enjoyable work." Jérôme Savary, the director of the Paris Opéra Comique, said it was insupportable that entertainers are preventing colleagues from working.

Summer festivals in France have mushroomed in recent years, with up to 2,000 events. Maryse Joissan Massini, the Mayor of Aix-en-Provence, said her city will lose between €15.2 million and €22.8 million if the city's opera festival continues to cancel performances. "The freelancers are sawing off the branch they sit on," she told Le Monde. "They don't have the right to take a city hostage."

Lara Marlowe