Is arts sector facing Covid armageddon?
Many communities depend on arts festivals for economic survival, writes Emer O’Kelly
ONE of Ireland’s most eminent artists, a musician of international status and repute, referred to Catherine Martin during the week as “PoohBah”. For those not up on their Gilbert and Sullivan, Pooh-Bah was the self-important title-laden Lord High Everything Else in The Mikado.
Catherine Martin has been appointed Minister for Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht, a multi-portfolio which has left many people currently struggling for survival in some of those areas in something close to despair. She has yet to make any comment about her hopes and plans for any of her areas of responsibility.
Artists, and those who work on their behalf, heard various politicians lauding their contributions to the nation’s spiritual and mental welfare during the desperation of lockdown. It might have sounded as though they actually were valued as the core of a civilised nation. But once again, they have found themselves at the end of a very long queue, with the likelihood of a future where politicians will go abroad, piggy-backing on their achievements and making speeches with the odd quotation from Seamus Heaney thrown in. But that’s it.
In May, the Arts Council (which has welcomed Martin’s appointment) set up a special advisory working group to examine and plan in the face of the Covid threat. It published its report on June 19 and this was submitted to the then minister (Josepha Madigan) on the same day.
It makes dismal reading. Management consultants EY had already reported that the arts sector would contract by 42pc in 2020, compared with a national average of 11pc. Before contraction, that translates into an annual contribution to GDP of €250m to €300m.
The Arts Council special committee came up with a devastating picture of what this means. Already, the various arts festivals across different forms, from Galway, Kilkenny, and smaller events such as the Festival of Music in Great Houses, Listowel Writers’ Week and even smaller but culturally important events had been wiped off the calendar, with a very real possibility that many of them would never return. And in practical terms, it’s the smaller events on which many communities depend for economic survival.
Venues, individual artists, and community organisations from around the country made submissions for the report, and the cumulative effect can justifiably be called shattering.
Taking some of them at random, Town Hall Theatre in Galway, at the heart of the artistic life of the city, and frequent home to Druid for its larger productions, would be reduced to an audience capacity of 24 under social-distancing rules. This is the venue where productions began which have brought untold kudos to Ireland internationally.
Michael Barker-Caven, director of the Civic Theatre in Tallaght, listed the effect on the local community: 300 events had been cancelled immediately, and an annual largely local audience of 50,000 had been wiped out, 5,000 young people were denied their thriving engagement with arts under the theatre’s community programmes. Thirty full- and part-time staff had lost their jobs. This, Barker-Caven wrote, was the effect on a venue “which makes a difference every day” to the community.
The Mermaid Arts Centre, in Bray, cancelled 134 events, and immediately lost income of €244,580. The cumulative financial loss to artists involved was €192,000.
In Cork, the Everyman Theatre lost 92pc of its income (the percentage it earns at the box office, which closed overnight) and has been dependent on the 8pc which is comprised of donations and grants.
Roisin McGarr, director of Siamsa Tire in Tralee, summed it up: “Covid is an extinction event for Siamsa.”
Government funding for ALL the arts in Ireland, disbursed by the Arts Council, was €75m in 2019. In 2020, it rose to €80m. Then Covid happened.
The special advisory group found that a further €21.4m was needed immediately, just for emergency sustainability. And to be fair to the Department (as Josepha Madigan made her exit), €20m was made available, which was understandably warmly welcomed by the Arts Council chair Kevin Rafter. But it comes with a sting in the tail: a further €30m will be needed as a Special Sustainability Fund for 2021 (in addition to the current €80m).
Nor have the Arts Council figures been pulled out of a fanciful hat: the economic advice to the Advisory Group came from Alan Gray of Indecon. It was announced that theatres could reopen in Phase Three of the government plan. Nobody at government level, however, came up with a viable method for them to open their doors and survive to make a contribution to their communities locally and to the country at large.
Catherine Martin tweeted last Monday a welcome for the reopening of the cultural institutions. Perhaps when she is less pre-occupied with her personal leadership ambitions, she will start talking about how they will survive under her
ministry.