The Easter weekend four years ago marked a high point in this State's relationship with culture. The 1916 centenary commemorations unleashed a nationwide wave of creativity. It was a moment of great ambition for the arts and culture generally, and saw a raft of new initiatives. The country's first national cultural policy, Culture 2025, was in development. An initiative, Creative Ireland, was established. The following year, the new taoiseach Leo Varadkar would commit to doubling expenditure on the arts and culture by 2025.
If that was a high point, the recent press conference by Minister for Culture Josepha Madigan on her department's response to the Covid-19 crisis marked a nadir. Madigan announced a "new €1 million scheme" for professional artists, which turned out to consist of just €500,000 of "new" money from the department and €500,000 of repurposed Arts Council funding.
It hardly helped that Madigan framed this announcement with otherwise laudable entreaties to people to “have fun with creativity” and “shine a light”. Many artists believe passionately in community engagement, but they do not see their role as the aesthetic equivalent of a group hug. The hashtag #covidartscrisis took off on Twitter. The National Campaign for the Arts said it was “dismayed by the lack of vision shown”.
To understand this lack of vision, it might help to trace the evolution of the Culture 2025 policy. A discussion document was launched in 2015 for what was intended to be a 10-year policy. In 2016, a draft policy document was submitted to the Oireachtas committee, who made recommendations in 2017. In January this year, Culture 2025 was finally published.
As a statement of principles, this short document is unobjectionable. But it contains little of any concrete purpose and, though it restates the aim of doubling funding by 2025, says nothing substantive about how that will be achieved. It is symptomatic of our political system’s lack of engagement in the arts that a 10-year “framework” plan could be published five years into that period and contain no evident plans, other than name checking pre-existing ones.
Part of the problem may lie at the Cabinet table. Irrespective of the calibre of individuals, the department is typically perceived either as a trainee brief for new ministers or a waystation for those on the way out. In turn, that reflects a wider perception in the media and society that the arts are an optional add-on. Until, that is, a global crisis strikes, and we all turn, not just to Netflix and TikTok, but to poetry, music and literature to help us find a way through. Perhaps not since the independence struggle have the arts and culture been as integral a part of the national consciousness. In the new Ireland that emerges out of this crisis, that should be remembered.