“Now strike your note” wrote the late Seamus Heaney. I was reading these words in ‘Sourcing Voices’ whilst remembering the late Sacha Abercorn, the founder of the Pushkin Trust. She was a great believer in the transformative aspects of creativity and imagination through song, culture, arts, writing, painting, performance and sculpture.
Unfortunately unlocking creativity in Northern Ireland has become problematic. The blockages in the political system are visible, imagination is stymied and Luddites rule supreme. Yeats said “We are the people of Burke, we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell”.
And yet now, we are the people who are suffering from cultural locked in syndrome because our politicians define and divide us by identity politics and tribalism. It is a long way from the Good Friday Agreement and the collective desire to reach beyond our grasp and to see ‘where the feather (of imagination) lands’.
Culture has taken on a base definition in Northern Ireland where murals, kerbstones, commemorations, marches, tin whistle/blood and thunder bands and of course the ubiquitous ‘flegs’ have priority over true creative and performing arts.
I have been lucky to live in an area that enjoys a thriving arts and cultural sector. We have literary and musical festivals, a renowned musical society; a huge féis, annual pantomime productions and a plethora of award winning amateur drama groups. We also have a light orchestra, a Chamber Music Ensemble and the wonderful creative space for children run by the imaginative Sticky Fingers organisation .
Despite all of this , Newry, Mourne and Down has no substantial performing arts centre or theatre.
Throughout the north the existence of arts and cultural activities is mainly due to the efforts of volunteers. Generations of volunteers whose energy has kept things going.
This is a sad reflection on the priorities of elected representatives. Whilst they can see the huge numbers involved in the arts, they are blinded to their value. There is also an inverse snobbery towards the arts. Yet tens of thousands of the public vote with bums on seats.
Notwithstanding a thriving local arts base and being Northern Ireland’s fourth largest city, Newry with Lisburn remains at the poor mouth of arts funding.
There is a new theatre proposed but such is the miserly funding provided by the Arts Council for Northern Ireland that the real challenge for would be users is whether or not they will survive long enough to ever set foot on its stage.
The contribution of the arts, particularly throughout the Troubles, has been greatly underestimated and much of it helped us understand our differences and deal with difficult issues around legacy and reconciliation. As we have hit the buffers politically speaking, resourcing those at the coal face of the arts has never been more important.
It is not surprising that Belfast receives the largest share of public funding from the Arts Council and the National Lottery. However, the scale of the disparity is much more distressing, disturbing and maybe worse.
In the past three years Belfast has received between £35 and £28 per capita for its arts projects; whilst Derry received between £12 and £10 per capita. Places like Newry, Mid Ulster, Armagh and East Antrim get just over £1 per capita to a pathetic nothing. This is simply not sustainable.
It’s also questionable if the Arts Council is fit for purpose. Grassroots arts is suffering because of a preference for grandiose projects. The big players in arts like the Ulster Orchestra, The Mac, The Lyric and Opera House have their black tie champions and sponsors but the grassroots have nothing but its volunteers.
The Arts Council is supposed to be for all Northern Ireland but the funding trail suggests otherwise. “ Art” says the French author, Andre Maurois “is an effort to create beside the real world, a more humane world”. Who wouldn’t want a bit more humanity (or parity) within Northern Ireland?
