Media Update

Angela Dorgan, Chair of NCFA, appeared on RTÉ News last night to discuss the NCFA calls to action – you can watch the piece back here.

• The Irish Times came out strongly in support of NCFA’s aims over the weekend, in an yesterday in an Editorial and an opinion piece by Una Mullally yesterday.

The Irish Times view on culture and the State: crying out for a sense of vision

• “Perhaps not since the independence struggle have the arts and culture been as integral a part of the national consciousness. In the new Ireland that emerges out of this crisis, that should be remembered.”

Una Mullally: Politeness has got the arts community nowhere 

• “Unless the next government takes the arts as seriously as the public does, there won’t be any poets left for our political leaders to quote. The denigration of the arts sector denigrates us all.

Hugh Linehan also wrote an opinion piece in Saturday’s Irish Times referring to the NCFA meeting and calls to action. 

Arts Council’s role is now to provide income continuance and business survival

• “A statement issued on Thursday evening by the NCFA gets the tone right. The State and its agencies urgently need to come up with a road map for the future, with resources to back it up. That should be done in consultation with creative artists, not dreamed up on a whiteboard on Merrion Street.”

Michael Dervan put the recent announcement in context with some other European countries.

Arts Council’s €1m Covid-19 package amounts to a pittance for artists

• “The scheme has had a scathing response from the arts community. You only have to look to Scotland to see why. Creative Scotland, the Scottish equivalent of the Arts Council, announced three new funds totalling £11 million (€12.5 million), with grants from £500 to £50,000. For Scotland’s population of 5.45 million, the cost works out at €2.29 per head of population. By contrast, the €1 million for Ireland’s population of 4.9 million works out at 20 cents. Comparisons with a country such as Germany, where culture is valued in an entirely more sympathetic way, would be even more invidious.“