Arts
I’m sure that you are quite accustomed to hearing and seeing the word ‘cuts’ everywhere since George Osborne, Brian Lenihan and Northern Ireland’s own Finance Minister, Sammy ‘Warld’sWirm’* Wilson launched their blitz on the public sector. At least they could have flown a Chilean miner over to make the announcement and soften the blow, but maybe that would have only brought back bad memories of Thatcher’s War on Coal back in 1984. This all came about in a climate where David Cameron was trying to whip up a bit of wartime patriotism, resurrecting the old ‘Your country needs you’ slogan to try and cover up the fact that he’d shat the coalition bed. Meanwhile the media was repeating the phrase ‘austerity measures’ to get everyone accustomed to leading frugal existences in order to get the government out of debt. Not many people are particularly happy about any of this, as has been illustrated many times across these islands in recent weeks, and not least by the sea of faces and placards outside Belfast City Hall at the trade union-led protest on a wet Saturday in late October. At the tail-end of the procession of disaffected firefighters, health workers, teachers and other workers, were members of the city’s beleaguered arts community. This positioning within the greater public organism was probably accidental, but symbolic nonetheless of the perception of art by many as an added extra, a nonessential component of society. As one of the 4% of people in Northern Ireland who rely on the arts for my livelihood, I am used to seeing varying degrees of indifference at street level – in the half-empty rooms of the underground music scene; in the numerous establishments which refuse to stock The Vacuum (my employer) paper due to its unsanitised representation of Northern Irish life; in the working class areas beyond the vaguely cosmopolitan environs of South Belfast. It is often difficult to persuade people that taking time to wander outside Artsnarrow Shorts confines of mainstream culture can be the rewarding and enlightening.
arts SHORTS The life of one of snooker’s most colourful characters, Alex Higgins, comes to the Grand Opera House in Belfast in the form of Hurricane. This awardhoovering West End production sees Richard Dormer take centre stage as the flamboyant, dangerous, substance-abusing, sporting legend. Focusing on every aspect of Higgins’ life, from the personal darkness to the bright, burning light of his talent, Hurricane is not to be missed. Hurricane plays at the Grand Opera House,
Essentially the problem is bureaucratic in nature. The Arts Council, the body responsible for lobbying the Department of Culture Arts and Leisure for money, is fond of comparing Northern Ireland’s annual arts funding per head of population to other areas (latest figures; £7.58 in NI, £14.04 in Scotland, £10.10 in Wales, £8.47 in England, and €17.92 in the Republic of Ireland), thereby illustrating its inefficiency in securing parity for Northern Irish artists. You only need to read some of the minutes from ACNI meetings with government ministers (although I wouldn’t recommend it as leisure activity) to see that the discussion is framed entirely in commercial terms. Culture is something that has to be justified by demonstrating that it brings in tourists and thus creates economic ripples throughout the service industry. It doesn’t help that the Culture Minister is Nelson ‘Dunderheid’* McCausland, who recently complained on his blog about “a barrage of bad language” in an unnamed performance that it is fair to assume is Black Watch, a multi-award winning play in this year’s Belfast Festival about soldiers serving on the frontline in Iraq. Indeed, Nelson’s primary role in his ministerial position appears to be ‘plowtin aboot’* in his wee Ulster Scots paddling pool whilst totally missing the point of everything else he is supposed to be helping facilitate. Perhaps it is the fact that the arts by their very nature are difficult to quantify that makes them a sitting duck for politicians and civil servants who are disengaged from the artistic process. The effect is more subtle and cumulative than providing X number of jobs and generating X amount of money for the economy in X amount of time. Grown men and women in cold, dilapidated buildings, nourished only by discount biscuits and prepackaged sandwiches, are dismayed to see their vocation turned into a statistics game and boxticking exercise. Foremost, art is about having a critically engaged population which has the means to express itself. It can act as a social irritant in that it encourages people to challenge the norm and ask
difficult questions, as with the recent Blasphemous exhibition in Dublin which aimed to generate debate about the introduction of the new Irish blasphemy law. A gallery, a theatre or an arthouse cinema can provide its patrons with an oasis from the corporatisation of modern life, somewhere they can simply sit and consider, through a piece of art, how someone else views the world. In order to put the arts firmly within the bigger picture, I propose that the populace participate in a radical conceptual art protest in solidarity with public sector workers. Basically this would involve taking the ‘No Cuts’ slogan to illogical extremes, with everyone avoiding having anything to do with the word ‘cuts’ in their daily lives, a kind of linguistic veganism. Think of the consequences; restaurant kitchens would no longer be able to operate, clothes wouldn’t get made, wounds would go untreated with plasters or ointments, hairdressers would close, films would be virtually impossible to make due to the necessity of capturing the entire script in a single extended shot. This would culminate in a final human intervention on the day of the Stormont elections in May 2011 whereby tens of thousands of hairy, ragged, undernourished people with wildly overgrown toenails (note: those of us already operating within the arts community need only adhere to normal levels of grooming) would set up a protest camp at the parliament building. The fuel could be siphoned out of the chauffeur-driven ministerial fleet to help power generators and Nelson’s Ulster Scots kilt requisitioned to patch up leaking tents. Now that’s austerity.
*A HELPFUL GUIDE TO ULSTER-SCOTS warld’s-wirm: a miser dunderheid: an idiot, simpleton, one not possessed of all their mental faculties plowtin aboot: splashing around
Words by Adam Lacey
Belfast from January 25- 29 and tickets cost between £13.50 and £19.75 Starting to feel Christmassy at all? Well get it in gear and head along to an amazing production of Howard Blake’s incredible The Snowman Movie – Live Concert. There’s a full orchestra playing live, a boy soprano singing ‘Walking in the Air’, dancing and possibly a visit from Santa for the earlier performances (bring the kids/some kids/a kid/go alone). Get festive!
The Snowman Movie – Live Concert is in the National Concert Hall in Dublin between December 12 and 23. Check www.nch.ie for more details. Another Yuletide one for you: Christmas markets. Belfast’s City Hall has the fantastic Continental Christmas Market – with over 28 countries represented in the booze and food department – until December 19, while Dublin hosts the Docklands Christmas Market
until Christmas Eve and the 12 Days of Christmas at the Point Village, with carol singing and all that Christmassy cultural extravagance. You’ll be spoilt for choice, really. Bring cash and get drunk on mulled wine with rum in it. The Christmas markets run in Dublin, Belfast and nationwide. William McKeown is fascinated by nature and how it affects our daily lives as we bustle about, heading to work, meeting
deadlines and taking much of it for granted. A renowned sculptor, painter and creator of specialist installations, William’s exhibition at the Ormeau Baths Gallery is meant as a five-piece meditation on our existence with. William McKeown’s Five Working Days runs in the Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast until January 15 and is absolutely free to enter. Liam Campbell’s Allotments exhibition is a series of photographs from Dublin and
Belfast that document the way in which people with garden allotments use their space and how those spaces subsequently represent them. The spaces begin to reflect the personalities of those tending to them and Liam’s photographs capture this in the vibrant national gardening community. The Allotments photo exhibition runs in the Group Space Gallery in Ulster Hall, Belfast between January 3 and 29.
—75 AU Magazine—