THEY’VE been referred to as ‘savage’ cuts. Dictionary definition: verb (used with object), savaged, savaging: to assault and maul by biting, rending, goring, etc.; tear at or mutilate.
Certainly mutilate when it comes the arts and here’s another blow to go alongside news of more cuts to theatre budgets. This message to the public from Rachel Wetherall, marketing officer for our precious Linen Hall Library:
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland has ceased to continue funding our popular cultural programme – talks, lectures, exhibitions, performances etc – through its National Lottery Programme Project funding stream... As a result, we have been forced to cancel a number of events. This is an extremely upsetting situation for the Library and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Please help us by telling the Arts Council how you feel about this. Write to: Chief Executive, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, MacNeice House, 77 Malone Road, Belfast BT9 6AQ.
You may think the arts come far down the list of priorities at the moment but I beg to differ. For instance, the cuts are already effecting children who would have visited the library this month to enjoy Wonderland, readings with Stripey Socks Productions and an art workshop with Patricia Campbell, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
It’s sad to read refunds are now available. This would have been a colourful and exciting introduction to the wonders of a library and of course, reading and books; it’s just one of the important events cancelled.
Theatre in all its forms is not only a chance to escape from this miserable cultural time in our lives but it’s also a way of learning, and it’s scandalous to treat it so savagely.
:: Learn more about the Linen Hall Library at linenhall.com before it’s too late.
Busy going nowhere for charity
DAVID Finlay and Adam McCrea support Action Cancer by cycling miles and miles and never leaving the front door of Marks & Spencer store at Newtownabbey.
Both men work in the food hall and are part of a Northern Ireland-wide team of M&S staff who are fundraising for the local charity. For four weeks they are on the move without leaving their place of work and they’ve almost raised their target of £10,000.
As Adam peddled, David told me that he has already walked many miles in Cuba and climbed mountains in Africa for the charity and if it wasn’t for the state of his knees he’d be walking the Grand Canyon later this year – although he still raised £3,500 in sponsorship.
Blaze Away
TODAY sees the start of North Berwick Fringe by the Sea Festival and there’s an 80-year-old connection with Belfast. Festival producer Johnny Shaw, originally from Belfast and now owner of Tartan Umbrella Tourist Guides and himself a Blue Badge guide for Scotland, will once more don his late father’s cricket blazer, itself a fixture and fitting of the festival over the past eight years and a talking piece at many other events this entrepreneur attends every year.
“It always gets a great round of applause when I’m introducing the acts!” This time Joan Armatrading, The Blues Band, Eddi Reader and Elaine C Smith top the bill and will meet ‘The Belfast Blazer’ as it’s known.
“Although it was a gift to me 40 years ago, it’s well over 80 years old as Dad, John Shaw snr, began playing for Cliftonville Cricket Club in his late teens and he died at 98 so it proves quality pays.”
Talk about the rope being Irish linen, although there are no labels left on the blazer which is in the colours of the once-famous cricket club, gold, claret and myrtle. It was made in Belfast from a mix of cotton and wool and has weathered the years from the pitch to the later years of parties and functions.
:: Details of this year’s Festival at fringebythesea.co.uk
Political correctness
I WONDER did you see Paul O’Grady with Cilla Black last Tuesday, a repeat programme made in 2013. Liverpool Lullaby, was a song she first made famous 50 years ago, gentle and touching, a mother coping with poverty and a drunken husband singing to her little boy, “Ee you are a mucky kid...” who’ll get a belt from his dad if he doesn’t behave.
When she sang it on the show two years ago the words had changed: “you’ll get told off by your dad.” May be politically correct but it made a nonsense of the gritty message in the song.
