ARTSCAPE:AT A TIME when public subsidy of the arts is under intense scrutiny and arts organisations are being challenged to justify their existence, welcome news is forthcoming from the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen's, writes Jane Coyle. Figures released in the past week, from a survey carried out by the festival among its 2008 audiences, reveal that its contribution to the Northern economy has grown to almost £8 million (€9m) a year. Ticket sales have doubled since 2005 and last year's figure of 43,500 tickets sold – together with a doubling of box office takings – signals 2008 as the most successful in its 47-year history, writes GERRY SMYTH.
“The festival is in excellent health,” beams director Graeme Farrow. “Audience figures have soared and we are now running a £1.75 million [€1.97m] turnover business, which brings fantastic spin-off benefits to Queen’s, to Belfast and to the region.”
Two years ago, a question mark was hovering ominously over the festival’s future. To the rescue came the Northern Ireland department of culture, arts and leisure with a one-off grant to ensure the 2007 event would go ahead. Then, last year, Ulster Bank stepped forward with a three-year sponsorship deal, thereby providing the organisers with the unfamiliar experience of being able to plan ahead with confidence.
The Ulster Bank sponsorship has been of enormous benefit to the festival, says Farrow, and has had “greater social and economic impact”, creating the annual full-time equivalent of 311 jobs in the run-up to and during the 16 days of the Festival. In comparison with comparable arts festivals in the UK and Ireland, the level of public subsidy of the Belfast festival is low, equating to 5 per cent of the overall economic impact generated. Last year, public funding accounted for 25 per cent of turnover, with the remaining 75 per cent coming from private investment and box-office income.
Farrow is jubilant that his argument for ongoing public support can be backed up by hard facts and figures. “The arts make a significant contribution to regional prosperity and to the quality of our lives,” he reasons.
Meanwhile, the city’s Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival is celebrating its 10th birthday this year. Its director, Seán Kelly, declared that “everything on this year’s programme is hand-picked and I can stand by every single event, 100 per cent.” It is hard to believe that the festival is 10 years old. In that time it has endured fire and flood, bulldozers and builders, as the cobbled streets and hidden courtyards of one of Belfast’s most historic areas has been brought to vibrant new life. The quarter and the festival have grown together, the one feeding off the other, in terms of identity, cultural significance and footfall.
“Ten years ago, it consisted of 45 events in eight or nine venues,” reflects Kelly. “It has grown to be 140 events in 28 venues. It is a bit of a big brute of a programme this year.”
With a sureness of touch and an astute sense of audience tastes, Kelly has launched what he describes as “a risk-taking programme, particularly given the times that are in it. But it is really gratifying to see that a lot of the edgier stuff is going so well, as well as the old reliables, which are flying out the door.” Acutely aware that live music has taken a severe hit as a result of the recession, the festival has concentrated on bringing in what Kelly calls “shows that are exceptional”. These include the opening concert by Moving Hearts, reunited in Belfast for the first time in 20 years; the new darling of rockabilly/blues/jazz, Imelda May; Oumou Sangare, a superstar in her home country of Mali; and pop legend Candi Staton, unveiling her lesser-known persona as a singer of soul and gospel from the deep south.
In a coup for the festival, Steven Berkoff performs his one-man show, Shakespeare's Villains; 4 Quartetsis a new dance and visual arts journey into the enigmatic poetry of TS Eliot, with music by Neil Martin. Catch up with the rest of this packed programme, which runs from April 30th to May 10th, on cqaf.com or 048 9023 2403.
Broadcast muse
Pop lyrics, a very relaxed style and a performance which isn’t like acting at all, according to Corcadorca director Pat Kiernan, will be the features of his company’s production for the Cork Midsummer Festival, opening on June 13th next. Famed for its site-specific and usually challenging presentations, Corcadorca has chosen the top floor of the 17-storey County Hall in Cork for a version of Medea devised by the Dutch theatrical collaborative run by Oscar Van Woensel. The pun on the name Medea is a deliberate modernisation of the ancient story so that it is told as a domestic event reported by the broadcast media. Gina Moxley, Louis Lovett and Tadhg Murphy lead a cast largely composed of a chorus which both transmits and comments on the narrative. “It’s something of a departure for us,” says Kiernan, “as it’s almost a casual retelling of awful events which can’t be changed even though they are being reported like entertainment in the context of popular songs which, like the story itself, have entered into the collective consciousness.” Audiences will be limited to 100 for the twice-nightly performances (until July 5th).
Delanty on the Agenda
Living in the fast lane of poetry, as Tom McCarthy describes him, has nonetheless brought Greg Delanty to his 50th birthday,
an event celebrated by the dedication of the current issue of the magazine Agenda to his work. Gathered for the launch of the issue at the central Library in Cork recently, a clutch of local colleagues read for him and spoke of him, while those collected in the magazine’s list of poems and essays include Terence Brown, Anthony Cronin, Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, John Montague and Anne Haverty, with Derek Walcott among the writers representing America and elsewhere.
Delanty himself was in good voice and spoke of a forthcoming publication dedicated to the theme of complicity, something which, he says, has been an issue throughout much of his work. Not quite so openly as this, perhaps: the new collection is in collaboration with a group of veterans of the Iraq war working in Vermont, where Delanty (published by Carcanet Press) teaches at St Michael’s College. The poems will be printed on paper manufactured from discarded army uniforms and will be published in a limited edition. “It will be fantastic,” says Delanty, “even if the poems are no good.”