I have expressed my scepticism about current government policy towards the Arts elsewhere on several occasions and noted the shift away from art as a real policy concern at a European level. I believe that a turning point has been reached, and it’s time for an honest conversation about the future of arts funding and policy in Ireland.
As somebody once said, I can’t remember who:
“If the answers feel uncomfortable, the questions are probably doing their job.”
The purpose of this blog is to challenge the habits and assumptions that have shaped arts policy and funding for a long time, and hopefully to invite policymakers, artists, and communities to think systemically — not just administratively — about the future of cultural value.
So, 23 questions from my notebook, here we go;
1. What if the real public value of the arts isn’t produced through projects at all, but through the relationships and continuity that make projects possible?
2. When did “supporting artists” become detached from “supporting the places and publics that sustain art”?
3. Why do we keep equating new work with public good?
4. Are we funding great art, or a bureaucratic rhythm of grant rounds?
5. If the Arts Acts speak of interest, knowledge, and standards, why is excellence the word we keep reaching for?
6. What if the purpose of funding is not to reward quality, but to grow capacity for curiosity?
7. Who decided that “artform development” should be the main organising principle of cultural policy?
8. Do artform silos describe how art is made, or simply how it is managed?
9. Has the pursuit of innovation become a substitute for investment in continuity?
10. What would happen if we suspended project funding for three years and invested only in capacity, trust, and experimentation?
11. Who now shapes national cultural policy — the Minister, the Arts Council, or the bureaucracy in between?
12. Why does the Arts Council wait to be requested for advice instead of leading public debate?
13. Has compliance replaced curiosity as the measure of accountability?
14. Is there a national arts strategy at all, or just a rolling series of schemes?
16. Can a body be policy leader, funder, and regulator at once without structural reform?
17. What would it take for the Arts Council to lead policy thinking again, not just administer funding.
18. Why do we still treat “participation” as a by-product when the Arts Acts make it a duty?
19. Are we distributing resources to the best applicants or to the broadest publics?
20. Who is excluded by our current definition of artistic quality?
21. Is “the arts sector” even a useful concept anymore — or do we need a cultural ecosystem frame?
22. What if “access to the arts” became the right to cultural creation?
23. Are we ready to design policy with artists and communities, not just for them?
It’s worth bearing in mind that the Arts Acts were written to “stimulate interest, knowledge and participation in the arts”. But somewhere along the way, we confused administration with strategy..
I’ve written these questions as a provocation to myself as much as anything it’s my hope that some or all of them might reopen a conversation that allows policy to regain some purpose.
I suspect that the answers won’t come from one department or one agency, or any one place, but from our collective honesty about what the system is designed to actually do, and what we really want it to do.
Consultant - Arts, Culture and Creative Industries 