Dear 

If you took part in a local parade over the weekend, we hope you had a great time.

We know that by working together and taking action, people all over the country have been making local arts events happen for decades. More often than not these are subsidized and kept going through volunteered time and the gifting of skills. As a result, the most contemporary arts experiences imaginable have become a part of what many neighbourhoods and communities have come to expect and welcome on a daily, weekly and yearly basis, and in some instances this has directly led to the establishment of a long-term cultural presence in a village, town or city.

In the run up to the local elections, our newsletters will feature the views of people working in Ireland who have gleaned a great deal of practical insight through experience into the reality of creating a cultural infrastructure that includes but goes far beyond bricks and mortar. In due course, we will also see what the view from Brussels is, as the EU elections are to be held on the same day as the local elections, on the 23rd May.

Tell candidates coming to your door that you as a constituent, have a voice, and you demand a fair deal for the arts, arts organisations and artists.
Nothing more and nothing less.

If they don’t come to you. Go to them.

Register to vote before 6 May.

Marie Farrell has contributed a special column putting local authority arts funding in context, asking us to think hard about what is at stake nationally if locally there isn’t decent ‘joined up thinking’ among all stakeholders that goes beyond short-term politics. Read full column here.

Next year marks 30 years since Clare County Council’s appointment of the first Arts Officer. The success of subsequent appointments across the country and stand-out achievements in the commissioning of public art and special initiatives in health and disability, for example, is the arts offices’ staffing levels have been rapidly reduced and organisational knowledge put at risk. Posts are now being left unfilled or managed on short-term contracts. This flies in face of years of sound recommendations. This is not acceptable.

Unlike local libraries, local arts are not considered an essential service of local government. We now demand that local authority arts funding be made core and not discretionary. National legislation requires all local authorities to prepare Arts Plans. But when it comes to implementation, the legislation says merely that local authorities may fund the arts, not that they must fund. Demand change.

We have compiled a list of the political parties’ arts spokespeople. Check if you have any of them in your area. Tell them you want local arts funding to be made core not discretionary. And don’t forget the independents too. Click here to see full list

Before heading to San Francisco for St. Patrick’s Day, Minister Deehihan explained to the Dáil that while his Department was funding events internationally to mark the occasion, “funding for Culture Ireland was reduced somewhat this year because we wanted to spend the money on local organisations and events”. Did your local parade benefit from this re-direction of funding? Let us know.

Elaborating on the reduction of funding to Culture Ireland, the Minster explained: “I was forced to reduce the funding allocation – it was a considerable reduction of some €700,000 – to Culture Ireland this year as a result of pressure from across the arts spectrum”. Given that the 2014 allocation to the Arts Council was also reduced, it begs the question as to where on the arts spectrum funding been re-directed. For example, can we assume that the government’s pledged allocation of funding to Irish Arts Center’s flagship building due to open in Manhatten NY, New York, is not on this spectrum?

Governance of the National Cultural Institutions has been subject to the serious attentions of successive governments since 2009. Having survived merger plans the surviving boards of the National Gallery of Ireland, the Crawford Gallery and the Irish Museum of Modern Art must be feeling a little existential after the weekend as on the one hand, a website promoting the collections they care for was launched as part of the Minister’s St. Patrick’s Day programme of events at Stanford University in California. Meanwhile, on the other hand, at home the Department has been busy undermining the National Cultural Institutions Act of 1997 by removing or reducing boards and reducing funding. Is it credible that the obligation to deliver the core policy goal of the Act to protect the state’s cultural assets on our behalf is still a priority for the Department?

The Department is very clear that it is responsible for policy in the matter of the NCIs. If you have a combination of National Cultural Institution and Dáil or Seanad Spokesperson on the Arts in your local area, let them know where your priorities lie.

The smallest of arts organisations must attend to governance, whatever the demands on its resources this creates, if it is in receipt of public funding. Auspiciously in 2016, it will have been 10 years since the Arts Council published A Practical Guide for Board Members of Arts Organisations. If you want to look back at that document, you can find it here.

With best wishes,

The Steering Committee: Mark Brennock, Valerie Connor, Vincent Dempsey, Gerard Howlin, Fiach Mac Conghail, Niamh O'Donnell, Claire Power, Mags Walsh.