REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE TO THE ASSOCIATION OF LOCAL AUTHORITY ARTS OFFICERS ANNUAL CONFERENCE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE TO THE ASSOCIATION OF LOCAL AUTHORITY ARTS OFFICERS ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Dia dhíbh a chairde. Tá an-áthas orm a bheith libh maidin inniú ag ceiliúradh an ócáid speisíalta seo, comhdháil bliantúil Oifigigh Ealaíne na hÉireann. I thank Rosaleen Molloy, Chair of the Association of Local Authority Arts Officers, for inviting me to this gathering of Arts Officers of Ireland.
George Bernard Shaw believed that the arts made life bearable. That is quite an accolade as well as a terrifying responsibility. “Without art,” he said, “the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable”.
Current economic realities are fairly crude and they translate into individualised and communal feelings of anger, worry and grief, jobs lost, homes vulnerable, pensions reduced in value and a whole host of things that conspire to make life unbearable for a lot of people. The arts cannot hope to solve those national and international financial problems but they can lift us, heal us, accompany us, entertain us, interest us, surprise us, explain us, explain others, comfort us, challenge us, blame us, vindicate us. They can and do in a million different ways make life bearable and they do that in good times and in bad, for the arts are part of the enduring and always needed leaven of life.
Ireland has a rich cultural life, steeped in the world of arts that infuses the most private and reclusive of lives as well as the most sociable of communities. The breadth and depth of what is going on in the world of arts in Ireland at any one time is nothing short of incredible. In this month alone I have seen a wonderful exhibition of local life in a magnificent new community centre, complete with dance and music studios, in Fatima mansions. I have visited Carlow’s superb new Community Arts Centre, Visual, where the best of national and international leaders in the world of arts and culture inspire new levels of self-belief in local artists across all disciplines. I opened the Hugh Lane Gallery’s fascinating insight into Francis Bacon, was enthralled by the Opera Ireland’s passionate delivery of Verdi’s Macbeth, was moved by Sebastian Barry’s sad Tales of Ballycumber in the Abbey Theatre, listened to Ceilidh House, saw school walls swathed in children’s drawings, heard children’s choirs, saw senior citizens display their new found talent as artists, was given a cedar bowl beautifully carved from windfall wood in Portglenone Abbey, met a prisoner who had discovered a gift for dress design in prison and a lot more besides.
The world of arts is woven so tightly into everyday Irish life that it would be easy to take it for granted but on this day and in this company I want to thank you for all you do to keep Ireland curious about the arts and confident in the arts, for making them the opposite of elitist and for bringing the opportunity to participate in and enjoy the arts into the lives of all our citizens. Each City and County Council plays a frontline role in cultivating an embedded arts culture and in creating access to the arts. Arts Officers are the hands and heads of that work. Your investment is what helps to give us a healthy, vibrant and resilient civic society. You help counter exclusion and pretentious exclusivity by promoting an egalitarian access to high quality cultural programmes close to home, at local level. You facilitate individual fulfillment as well as communal social cohesion, civic pride and general well being. I thank you for that important work and for making it your vocation and your craft. You keep the well of Irish arts and culture fresh and full, you introduce us to the arts and cultures of other lands and you enhance too the unique universal reach and appeal of Irish arts and culture by creating platforms for new and seasoned artists from which they can stretch their wings confidently in the wider world. Despite the downturn, we are still on Broadway, at the Oscars and the Emmys, at the Venice Biennale, the Booker Prize and just last week Colum McCann won the US National Book Award - not bad for a tiny island community and quite a vindication of all those who work for the success of the Arts in Ireland.
John Updike remarked that “what art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.” There has been considerable investment in that space in recent years, by central government, local government, the public, individual volunteers, community groups, philanthropists, businesses, professional artists and professional arts officers. In the summer a massive rash of festivals breaks out across the country so that no matter what the weather is inflicting on us there is something exciting to distract and appeal to us. Carrick-on Shannon’s Water Music Festival managed to drown out the din of relentless rain even this past summer for those of us who spend our summers there and the same was true the length and breadth of the country. I know many of you were at the heart of that work, operating on tight budgets, harnessing the very best of community endeavour and bringing the world of the imagination deep into our lived lives. I hope you enjoyed it all as much as we did. I hope too that as we nudge our way through these less financially flaithuileach times that your imagination, resourcefulness and determination will keep the arts flourishing and life bearable.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh agus comhghairdeachas le Oifigigh Ealaíne na hÉireann.