A call for support and recognition for Ireland’s traditional music sector featured yesterday at the annual general assembly of Aosdána, the affiliation of artists which honours high achievement in the arts and selects members by peer review and election.
The meeting took place at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham yesterday, and some discussion was devoted to the election of new members.
Although 16 people were nominated for membership, only one person was elected: Irish-language actor and playwright Joe Steve Ó Neachtain.
The quota for membership is 250 and it now stands at 248.
The morning session was closed to the public, but it included the discussion of three motions, and a presentation from a financial adviser.
One of the morning motions proposed that “an Aosdána equivalent body” would recognise “Ireland’s traditional music heritage” and “celebrate and honour” it by including Irish traditional music practitioners. This motion was proposed by fiddle player Tommy Peoples.
Aosdána received €2.7 million from the Arts Council this year, most of it supporting the €17,180 stipend, or cnuas, that is received by 155 of its members. The Arts Council’s budget for this year was €56.9 million.
The public session opened with a presentation from poet and critic William McCormack, whose pseudonym is Hugh Maxton. He argued that, in 1981, when Aosdána was established, “guesstimates were all we had. Assuming that not all members would claim the annual cnuas, it was predicted that the cost might amount to less than one-seventh of the Arts Council’s total disbursement, or half what the Abbey Theatre got per annum.”
Maxton told the assembly that, 33 years on, “far less than taking a predicted one-seventh of the disbursement, Aosdána takes fractionally more than one-twentieth”. Yet, the vexing fact is that “the cnuas payments to circa 150 members are regularly held up to hostile scrutiny without mention of the 90 or so members who make no claim on the public purse”.
Increasingly centralised
He continued: "The State has fewer and fewer direct links to the arts, and these links themselves are increasingly centralised one way or another.
“However valiantly the Arts Council tries to balance the Wexford opera festival with the Contemporary Music Centre, or the Listowel Writers’ Week against the Courthouse Arts Centre in Tinahely, the dice generally favours the safe, the established and the metropolitan. Diversity is recognised and supported, yet the big bucks end up in Abbey Street.”
There were several responses from the floor to Maxton’s presentation. Among them was visual artist James Hanley, who said: “People do have questions about Aosdána, and what it is for. The public don’t always understand what we do, because we don’t communicate it properly.”
Hanley suggested that Aosdána be more active as a body.
Writer Mannix Flynn urged members “to leave this assembly defending Aosdána. It’s not elite. It’s a unique organisation, and it’s very, very important that we all defend it.”
