Will New NCAD Board Hold the Fort

Will new NCAD board hold the fort?

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Edited by Deirdre Falvey

ArtScape: Next week sees the first meeting of the NCAD's newly appointed board, and the election of a new chairperson, developments sure to have implications for the future of the college, writes Aidan Dunne.

Apart from the college's Director Colm O'Briain, and the elected staff and student members, who include John Brennan, Jennifer Caffrey, Theresa McKenna and Andrew Folan, there are two re-appointments: Mairin Quill and artist Betty Newman-Maguire. Minister for Education Mary Hanafin has also appointed four new faces, however. They are Marie Bourke, the notably industrious head of the education department at the National Gallery of Ireland, solicitor Liam Crowley, RTÉ's Joe Mulholland and designer John Sherwin.

Late last year, the news that O'Briain had been exploring the possibility of moving NCAD lock, stock and barrel to the Belfield campus proved widely unpopular within and without the college. But if NCAD is to remain where it is, there is the question of funding and effecting a much needed development plan budgeted at more or less €80 million. The new board is going to have to face up to these issues and there is, on the face of it, not much in the way of middle ground. A move to Belfield would be drastic and irrevocable. Continued occupancy of Thomas Street entails serious financial commitment. The staff and student members canvassed for election on the basis of their opposition to the move. It remains to be seen which way the Minister's new appointees view the issue, but it is important that decisions are made and the college receives the enhanced resources it badly needs.

Fleadh in a field of dreams

A major international "traditional and Celtic" music festival is planned for Ballybunion next August, writes Siobhán Long. The World Fleadh is an Irish response to the major European and North American traditional and folk music festivals such as Brittany's Festival Interceltique de Lorient, Edinburgh's Celtic Connections and the Milwaukee Irish Festival, all of which have become magnets for emerging and established musicians in search of more diverse audiences.

Galway musician, composer and promoter Eric Cunningham is the World Fleadh's festival director. He has big plans for the festival which he anticipates will become an annual event, albeit in different locations around Ireland. "I've seen so many international festivals where professional Irish musicians top the bill, and yet there's no place for them to play to similar audiences when they come back home."

Ballybunion has bagged the inaugural festival to celebrate the launch of its €4 million, 550-seat theatre, Tinteán, which is due to be officially opened on April 15th next, Easter Saturday. Michael Carr, CEO of the North Kerry Arts, Culture and Heritage Society and firebrand originator of Tinteán, sees the theatre as north Kerry's "field of dreams", enabling the lesser-known parts of the Kingdom to showcase the best of traditional and folk music to Irish and international audiences. Undaunted by the difficulties encountered by other arts centres in luring the public to hear traditional music, Carr says: "I don't think we should be too purist. Irish audiences don't want that. They want to be educated about what's out there, and we want to give them that by promoting major Irish and international acts such as Lúnasa, 4 Men & A Dog and Solas."

The World Fleadh features Lúnasa, the Waterboys, the Gipsy Kings, La Bottine Souriante and many more.

See www.theworldfleadh.com

James Connolly rises again

"Dossers, buskers and orators" along with activists, singers, musicians, waged and unwaged workers are due to participate in the "distilled" Non-Stop Connolly Show in Galway's Town Hall Theatre tomorrow week, which will celebrate the life and times of socialist and 1916 Rising leader James Connolly, writes Lorna Siggins.

It will also explore Connolly's relevance today, according to authors Margaretta D'Arcy and John Arden, who have abridged an original version staged in Liberty Hall, Dublin, during Easter, 1975. That version was co-directed and co-ordinated by Jim Sheridan, was sponsored by the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) and involved a 26-hour marathon which made the Guinness Book of Records. The show, which explores Connolly's boyhood, apprenticeship, his participation in the 1913 Lockout, the first World War and the Easter Rising, has been staged in various forms in various venues.

John Quinn will read the part of Connolly. Quinn has appeared in Father Ted, Draíocht for TG4, and his written work includes Shem's Progress: James Joyce and the writing of Finnegans Wake for BBC Radio 3.

Also in Galway city, next Saturday marks the last day of a mystery exhibition by anonymous artists. More than 40 artists have contributed paintings, drawings, photography, print work, sculpture and mixed media to the Galway Civic Trust to raise funds for the historic Fisheries Tower on Wolfe Tone Bridge. Each work costs a set price of €200, and the artists' identities will be revealed by Tom Kenny of the Kenny Art Gallery at noon on April 1st. Tel: 091-564946

A storyline to the past

Literature and history - and Mongolian violins - will rhyme during this year's Between the Lines Festival, at the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast from April 3rd to 9th, writes Jane Coyle. Festival co-ordinator John Brown has chosen to look at the many and varied ways in which writers revisit history, "the way individual writers keep faith with their own voice, language, styles and imaginative truths in complicated mixtures of fact and fiction that are in and 'out of this world'."

There will be readings by Carlo Gébler, Michael Foley, Matt Kirkham, Lucy Caldwell, Kitty Fitzgerald, Charles Townshend, Jamie McKendrick, George Szirtes, Terry Eagleton and last year's Man Booker prizewinner John Banville. Steve Tromans & the Howl Band celebrate the 50th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg's iconic poem; actor Paddy Scully presents his new adaptation of CS Lewis's The Screwtape Letters; and an evening of music, poetry and song, in the company of, among others, Ciaran and Deirdre Carson, Michael Longley and Jamshid Mirfenderesky, will celebrate the life of Belfast's much-missed man-about-the-arts Ted Hickey.

And the Mongolian violins? A reference to Medley for Morin Khur by Paul Muldoon, whose new collection Horse Latitudes is to be published this year and whose appearance on the final evening is called Making History, Rich and Strange.

Last call for prospective creative and performing arts students to apply to Bank of Ireland's €12.5 million Millennium Scholars Trust before the deadline of April 3rd. Scholarships from €3,200 to €38,000 are available; for an application form, contact Bank of Ireland branches or Millennium Scholars Trust office, tel: 1850-221721 or 01-4498500.

The Galway Arts Festival's production of Mark Doherty's Trad won a Fringe First last weekend at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, where the acclaimed production has been going down a treat.

The four artists shortlisted for the 2006 AIB Prize are: Sean Lynch (nominated by Limerick City Gallery of Art); Austin McQuinn (Butler Gallery, Kilkenny); Eamon O'Kane (Draíocht, Dublin); and Linda Quinlan (Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork). The annual award for artists of promise is €20,000 to create new work for exhibition and a catalogue, and runners-up get €1,500 each. The overall winner will be announced on May 3rd at the RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin where a selection of the finalists' work will be shown.

A seminar on Wednesday, Don't Touch that Dial! Music, Radio and Audience, looks at the issues facing programmers of non-mainstream radio in an increasingly competitive commercial environment. Aodán Ó Dubhghaill (director of RTÉ Lyric fm), Fiona Talkington (presenter of BBC Radio 3's world music programme Late Junction) and Philip King (director of Hummingbird Productions) will address the seminar at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick at 2.30pm, and chaired by Dr Eoin Devereux of UL. Tel: 061-202917 for details.

Thursday sees the start of a Lesbian Arts Festival (aLAF) in Dublin, showcasing lesbian talent and issues in music, visual arts, cabaret and poetry. It includes an exhibition by Yvonne Hennessy and Leanne Hurley at the Front Lounge; Eileen Leahy's QueerVisual, projected in South Great George's Street; and GrrrlRock in the George pub on Friday. Wind Down - Play Up, the Sunday cabaret, is in Gubu, Capel Street from 5pm. See www.alafireland.com