GETTING IT ARTS WAYS

However, what might have seemed at first glance like a bit of good news was badly soured by the further revelation that the proposed budget for the Music Board amounted to a mere #300,000 enough presumably to run an office and to pay the telephone bills but scarcely sufficient to allow any prospective board to contribute anything meaningful or substantial to the growth and development of the industry here. Given that the budget for the Irish Film Board stands, at the moment, at approximately #5.3 million, it would be understandable if industry activists were to read into the provision for the Music Board some kind of statement regarding the relative importance or rather lack of it attached by the Minister and her advisors to what has been achieved by Irish musicians and Irish music.
While the details of that development await further clarification, the problems at the Arts Council are all too plainly manifest. These should be halcyon days for those charged with the task of devising and implementing arts policy in Ireland. The budgets available to the Arts Council itself have grown enormously under successive administrations it is to the Minister s credit that in 2001, the figure will rise to #37.5 million, giving the Council access to funds at a level which would have been literally unimaginable ten years ago. However, instead of prospering in this new cash-rich climate, the Arts Council seems more divided than at any time in its recent history. The resignation of the Chairman, Brian Farrell was but the first of three au revoirs which were tendered last week, with U2 manager Paul McGuinness and Jane Gogan, the Commissioning Editor at TV3, also relinquishing their seats on the board. Both explained their respective decisions by citing pressure of work. But in truth, there can be little doubt that this kind of implosion reflects an ongoing tension and uncertainty about what the Arts Council should be doing, and how it should be going about it.
The current problems seem all the more difficult to understand, given that the operations of the Council are being run on a day-to-day basis by an administrator of the calibre of Director, Patricia Quinn whose ability to deliver the results on the basis of policies set down by the Board can scarcely be in doubt.
The conflicts which have debilitated the Arts Council stem in part at least from the very size of the Board. At the best of times, it can be difficult to make progress where a Board of part-time appointees is concerned, but when there are 15 of them, and each appears to have been chosen to represent one interest group or another, then the potential implications are multiplied. In that context the real skill, at Ministerial level, lies in choosing well people who are inclined towards cohesion and decision-making and who will not allow their own sectional concerns to stand in the way of the greater good. And in particular, the role of Chairman (or woman) can make a crucial difference. A positive, constructive working relationship between the Chair and the Executive is clearly of central importance. But the Chair must also be sufficiently engaged, and in touch, to understand and mediate the concerns of his or her fellow board members.
This is a difficult task, and a time-consuming one, and I must say that I wasn t convinced that Brian Farrell would be up for it when I read the report in The Irish Times the day his appointment was announced. I wouldn t claim to have anything as pretentious as a philosophy of the Arts, he said, and you were forced to wonder then why are you accepting what is clearly one of the most important roles in the Arts in Ireland?
The very least that might be hoped for in the circumstances is an abiding passion for the particular area of responsibility but there was no evidence in anything Brian Farrell said along the way, either in his years in RTE or since he took up the post with the Arts Council that reflected this either. None of this is to engage in criticism of Brian Farrell himself he was asked, and graciously he agreed to give of his time and energy in the service of the State. But the question remains: why had he been asked?
Smle de Valera is rightfully regarded as one of the most decent, genuine and likeable politicians ever to have won a seat in the Dail. But she is not a conviction politician and convictions are needed right now in the sphere of Arts and Culture. One wonders, for example, what has caused her apparent change of mind in relation to the future of the broadcasting transmission infrastructure. From the time I spent with the Independent Radio and Television Commission, I understand well the arguments for separating the transmission function from that of programme-making within RTE. I can also see the argument for setting up an independent national authority which would take overall responsibility for transmission matters. But the current proposal seems to be that this core element of our cultural infrastructure should be sold off to the highest bidder an entirely different concept, for example, than creating a separate state agency whose role it would be to ensure that there was transparency in relation to the treatment of all users of whatever infrastructure was involved.
Now this is where having a philosophy of the arts and of culture becomes important. Are we prepared to let Rupert Murdoch s BSkyB, for example, become the gatekeeper, and to exercise control in one degree or another over the terrestrial broadcasting, and digital broadcasting, networks? At the very least, this is a subject which requires careful and detailed consideration and debate.
The record of the government in this regard is not good. Decisions in relation to broadcasting issues the dropping of the 3% levy on independent stations, for example have too often been taken in the absence of real debate and without any apparent recognition of the underlying philosophical issues, and in abstraction from any feel for the practicalities of the milieu.
The establishment of a Music Board was proposed originally by Hot Press, in a special on the Music Industry in Ireland almost 15 years ago. Having originated the idea, we should be experiencing a warm glow of vindication, now that it seems that it is finally if belatedly being brought into being. But like most other things in the area of arts and culture, it will require a combination of the appropriate budget, a cohesive mission statement and the right personnel for it to achieve its potential. Like the Arts Council, and the proposed National Broadcasting Authority. We await developments with interest.