Speech at a Garden Party to mark Bloomsday
Áras an Uachtaráin, 16 June 2018
Tá fáilte romhaibh anseo tráthnóna chuig Áras an Uachtaráin agus muid ag ceiliúradh an lá tábhachtach seo ar fhéilire cultúrtha na hÉireann.
You are all so welcome here this afternoon to Áras an Uachtaráin as we celebrate this most important day on Ireland’s cultural calendar.
The 16th June marks, of course, the date of Leopold Bloom’s famous journey around Dublin on a Summer’s day in 1904. Over a century later Bloomsday remains a day when we have the opportunity to celebrate the genius of James Joyce, his legacy to us, and as we celebrate not only that great talent and the life of James Joyce, we also have the opportunity to recognise and acknowledge the immense and generous talent of so many remarkable writers, performers and artists who enrich our lives at home and abroad.
We also remember fondly those no longer with us, but whose inspiration remains with us. We think in a special way of Deirdre O’ Connell of Focus Theatre whose birthday is on Bloomsday.
We must never forget on Bloomsday the person, the family, and the sacrifices that gave us the ground-breaking literary inheritance that is celebrated all over the world. Ireland owes a debt to James Joyce. Earlier this month I had the opportunity to lay flowers at the grave in Fluntern, where Joyce has rested since 1941, later joined by his wife Nora Barnacle and other members of his family. I thanked the Zurich authorities and the gardener who have cared with such sensitivity for his resting place.
While James Joyce is celebrated in so many institutes and universities it is particularly moving to visit those who recall the life, in all its vicissitudes as well as its glories. Earlier that day I had the great pleasure of visiting the James Joyce Foundation in Zurich; a great repository of both valuable material gathered by Dr. Fritz Senn, now over 90 years of age, who joined us at the event. Zurich continues to honour James Joyce not only as an internationally renowned writer, but as a migrant to whom it gave shelter. The everyday notes and scraps of writing on display at the Foundation included messages from James Joyce’s family life and the importance he attached to its intimacies.
We have, in recent weeks, very sadly lost another iconic member of Ireland’s literary family - the great writer Tom Murphy, whose contribution to Irish theatre was outstanding.
He was above all the great playwright of the emigrant, capturing, in a poignant way the impact of emigration, an experience that included loss, violence and humour, all part of the transience that is at the heart of the emigrant experience. On this Bloomsday we remember Tom Murphy and all that he contributed to Ireland’s cultural life and to our international reputation. His sending off was, I believe, something of which he would approve.
Today we are celebrating as a theme for our garden party here in the Áras, the great importance and power of arts and culture within the community. It is a great pleasure, may I say, to have so many of our citizens gathered here today who are so generously working to bring arts and creativity into all corners of our society, enabling performance, music, dance, art and literature to be enjoyed by all of our citizens of all generations.
It may seem like a statement of the obvious, but it is worth repeating - the arts have a rich capacity to connect people across boundaries and barriers, to create strong and endurable connections and enrich the lives of our communities. Indeed, time and again as President of Ireland I have witnessed the great resource that our artists and arts organisations constitute in building strong community links and, indeed especially in empowering under-represented communities to share their stories and not only to maintain but celebrate in the public space their unique cultural and community traditions.
It is of importance, not only to the present generation but to future generations, that we ensure that public spaces, and the opportunities for collective celebration. When diverse members of the community, citizens of all ages, backgrounds and creeds, gather together to participate in film and literary festivals; to support their local theatre; to experience music and dance performances in the squares and streets and parks that are so much part of their everyday lives, that it is a celebration of the public world, a world that is shared, that is so different from the world of any exclusive privatised experience.
The benefits of community arts projects, and how their enrichment of the lives of all those who take part whether as artistes, participants or spectators are a source of energy that is mutually shared between generations.
Provision for the arts; be it financial or through the creation of places where artists can hone their craft and be enabled to think in ways that are creative and emancipatory, must be seen as a necessary part of the infrastructure of our society. As a society, therefore, we owe a debt to those who have the vision to provide and enable opportunities for the development of the creative instincts and capacity of our citizens and we have come a long way, but with much more to be achieved.
To all involved in these contributions to citizenship in its best sense, may I offer my thanks as President of Ireland. What you do is so very important for renewal and sustenance of the life of our society, for the health of our society, and as the best guarantee that can be of the imaginative possibilities of the citizens of the future.
Your work in connecting creativity and community through festivals, local theatre, community arts projects and the provision of accessible venues for the arts broadens the reach of all artistic activity, demystifies what may seem complex, removes barriers, makes artistic performance accessible to all.
Recognising the importance of the Arts is something that is critical when, on occasion, too often the arts are viewed as something apart, peripheral, something that belongs on the fringes of society, a luxury for those who can afford it. That is a view that must be constantly challenged if we are to ensure the survival of the arts and of cultural identity and the fundamental role of cultural access in the creation of true citizenship.
Tá sé ríthábhachtach na healaíona a thabhairt isteach i gcroílár ár sochaí agus isteach sna spásanna laethúla atá againn. Caithfimid tacú len ár leabharlanna agus ár láithreacha áitiúla; tionscadail ealaíon pobail a mhaoiniú; spásanna poiblí a ath-shamhlú, agus iad a chasadh isteach ina ionaid inar féidir leis an phobal taitneamh a bhaint as na healaíona.
Bringing the arts right into the heart of our society and into the everyday spaces we inhabit is so important. We must support and cherish our libraries and local theatres; fund community arts initiatives; re-imagine and re-energise, public spaces, turning them into venues where the arts can be enjoyed and appreciated by all.
If we put arts at the very edge of our society, place them out of the reach of the majority of our citizens, we do ourselves a great disservice. We deprive ourselves of the great power of the arts to bring us together, to stimulate debate and argument, to kindle the great wealth of creativity that translates into such wonderful experiences of life to be lived and imagined, voyages of new discovery, and the opening of pathways to different and better futures.
Without access to the work of talented artists we would lose so many of those transformative opportunities. The contribution of art to the public world is enormous and those who facilitate it are critical to the infrastructure of citizenship.
I thank all of you, therefore, for all you do in so many ways to bring the enriching joy of arts and culture into our towns and villages and suburbs, into our public spaces and everyday lives, working to ensure that everyone receives the right to engage in the cultural life of our nation.
Sabina and I appreciate the enthusiasm with which you have partaken in this special garden party and our wish is that, on this fine summer afternoon, reminiscent of that Derby Day in 1904, you continue to enjoy ourselves.
May I conclude by thanking all those who have come here this afternoon to play music, perform and read and what a programme it has been, put together by the curators of today’s event – Alan Gilsenan, who cannot be here with us today, and Ken Hartnett, who both deserve our special thanks. We have had – Fintan O’Neill, Ann Marie Farrell and Conor Molloy; Stomptown Brass; Barry McGovern, Celine Byrne, Niall Kinsella and Rose Lawless; Flo McSweeney and Fiachra Trench; Tom Hickey; Claire Barrett; Kila and, of course, our wonderful MC Tom Dunne. For the quality of the superb sound, may I thank Dee Rogers and his team.
A big thank you, also, to the staff here at the Áras, to our friends in St. John of God’s, the Civil Defence, the Gardaí, our volunteers from Gaisce and the tour guides and all who have worked so hard to make today an occasion of friendship and joy.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh uile as ucht a bheith linn tráthnóna. Bainigí sult as an chuid eile den lá. Enjoy the rest of your time here and thank you for coming.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.