Category: Arts policy

Upcoming conference: Culture and The City

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Event Announcement:

Culture and the City Conference- Keeping Dublin Creative!
21st October 2008, 9am-5pm
The National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE REGISTRATION FORM (in PDF)

On October 21st 2008 Temple Bar Cultural Trust will host a conference on the theme of Culture and the City at the National Gallery of Ireland, in partnership with Dublin City Council.

This one-day conference will provide a platform for discussion, debate and exchange of experience from Irish and international practitioners around some of the key issues affecting cultural development in Dublin. The conference will explore ways of achieving a more integrated approach to planning and development for culture in Dublin city. It will also explore ways of enhancing the level of civic engagement and public participation in the cultural life of the city.

Among the speakers at the conference will be Jude Woodward, senior policy advisor on culture to Mayor of London; Laura Magahy, CEO MCO Projects; Franco Bianchini, academic and consultant on cultural policy; Sir Ken Robinson, internationally renowned speaker and consultant on creativity and innovation; Catherine Bunting, Head of Research with the Arts Council of England in addition to representatives from The Arts Council of Ireland.

The conference will present an insight into current thinking and planning for cultural development within the Development Plan for Dublin City. It will provide practical experience from other European cities in terms of best practice and provide conference participants with the opportunity to contribute to the discussion on the future of cultural development in the city, and in particular on the elements required to successfully drive this strategy forward.

The conference is designed to be of interest to a wide range of groups and individuals working across a range of sectors including the arts and cultural community, urban planners, architects, local representatives, the business community, academics, artists and anyone with an interest in shaping the future for culture in the city!
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IMMA’s collections in crisis

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Part of the Tain tapestry series by Louis le Brocquy, one of the works currently suffering from poor storage conditions

A Tain tapestry by Louis le Brocquy, one of the IMMA works suffering from poor storage conditions

IMMA’s storage crisis made the front page of the Irish Times over the weekend, as a report obtained by the IT through Freedom of Information detailed the extent of damage that’s been done to the permanent collection due to inadequate storage facilities. This is the second revelation in recent months of serious mismanagement of national collections (following a damning audit of the National Museum’s collections by the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General). The five-year-old IMMA report, authored by collections curator Catherine Marshall, details buckling of artworks, prints adhering to glass, and bloom appearing on metal sculptures– such damage making the works in storage ‘dangerous to handle’ unless absolutely necessary.

A second piece in the IT continued the IMMA story further:

Imma’s own on-site stores at its home at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham (RHK) were crammed with artworks, constituting a serious hazard as they could not be evacuated in the event of a fire and had no proper environmental controls to protect fragile works of art. With well over 1,000 works in its permanent collection by then, the vast bulk was being housed in “temporary” and “interim” warehouses and stores sourced off-site by the Office of Public Works (OPW), none of which were really suitable for storing art.

So critical had the storage situation become that Imma was forced to store works in a shipping container in the car park. The use of the shipping container was described as an emergency solution. But the “emergency” lasted four years. In September 2007, Imma’s director Enrique Juncosa wrote to Sean Benton, the chair of the OPW, again highlighting its storage problems.

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Arts Council releases landmark ‘Arts in Education’ report

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Big in policy news: the Arts Council has released its long-anticipated report on the Arts and Education, ‘Points of Alignment’ (see press release). A taster from the report:

‘Arts provision for children and young people both in and out of school is arguably the single greatest fault line in our cultural provision. This is recognised by practitioners and public alike, the latter clearly giving it the highest priority in the 2006 study of public attitudes and behaviour The Public and the Arts.

The establishment in 2006 of the Special Committee on the Arts and Education confirmed an alignment between politicians, practitioners and public around the need to address this issue. The Report of the Committee in 2007 was adopted unanimously and enthusiastically by the Arts Council and submitted to the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism and to the Department of Education and Science. The report has been the subject of detailed discussions between both Departments and the Arts Council and the Council now publishes it with the fervent hope that its recommendations are addressed to the lasting benefit of Irish society.’

Martin Drury of the Arts Council will be discussing the report on the radio show Artbeat, 103.2 Dublin City FM tonight at 8.00 pm. It’s a dense report with many recommendations and points of interest, and I’ll be blogging more about it tomorrow after a little light evening reading… 🙂

New publication: State on Stage

A new book from the Boekman Foundation may be of interest:

State on Stage: The impact of public policies on the performing arts in Europe

[from press release]
State on Stage tunes in on the relationship between governments and performing arts in European countries over the past fifteen years. In order to survive, performing arts organizations in Europe must adapt to ongoing changes in the artistic, commercial and political climate. Although maximizing market revenues has become business as usual for companies and venues, most still require substantial involvement from the government.

Governments, at their turn, expect more economic, educational or social tasks next to the artistic occupations before funding. This book shows how performing arts professionals manage to combine commercial entrepreneurship with the political skills needed to operate in a government environment.

State on stage offers both a pan-European overview and national portraits of fifteen EU member states, depicting a lively, dynamic performing arts scene, prospering in the new millennium. It also reveals what’s happening behind the scenes: oversupply, with thousands of performing artists unable to find proper jobs, seeking additional income elsewhere. Despite the generosity of governments at all levels, public money comes either in insufficient quantities, or is spent inefficiently.

This book describes the hopes and dreams that keep performing artists motivated under these difficult conditions. It contains inspiring literature, essential recommendations and new perspectives for everyone involved in this field: artists, managers, scholars, policy makers and politicians active in Europe and across its borders.

Arts Management Conference website now live

We’ve launched the new website for the upcoming Arts Management conference at UCD on 11-12 July 2008, and are now taking registrations. Check out http://www.artsculture08.ie for all the conference details, and to join in online discussion on the conference themes.

**Please note: this conference website has now been archived to http://artsmgmt2008.wordpress.com.**