This week in the US, the Taoiseach appointed actor Gabriel Byrne as Ireland’s Cultural Ambassador. So, what will he be doing?
THIS WEEK, actor Gabriel Byrne was appointed to the new position of Cultural Ambassador for Ireland, with the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, making the announcement in Washington on Tuesday. Based in the US since 1987, it’s a role the award-winning actor has been informally carrying out for some years now, promoting Irish culture abroad. The new, formal, role is for a three-year term. It carries no salary, but expenses incurred will be covered.
Byrne will be working closely with Eugene Downes, chief executive of Culture Ireland, a State agency that promotes Ireland’s arts and culture internationally and advises on the development of the country’s international cultural relations. “For some time now, we’ve been looking at new opportunities to promote Irish culture abroad,” Downes explains. He sees Byrne’s appointment as helping to “redefine Irish culture in the world,” pointing out “most Americans now encounter Ireland through culture. It’s a crucial way of developing an awareness of Ireland. Culture is a real asset a country has in times of recession, because it’s unique; it can’t be replicated by other countries.”
One of the challenges Byrne faces is that of updating the often-clichéd generic American perception of Ireland. The most recent high-profile example of this is Leap Year, an American-made rom-com set in Ireland, and recently derided by critics for bounding from one terrible cliché to the next. This is a film purporting to be set in contemporary Ireland, yet it includes the line "Top of the mornin' to you" as a sample of ordinary conversation.
“We see the role of Cultural Ambassador being an endorsement of the practical work Gabriel has already been doing; publicly advocating and privately developing a new stage to present Irish culture in the broadest possible sense,” Downes says. “For example, next year, Culture Ireland will be organising a season of Irish arts in the US”, including New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Philadelphia. While the programme won’t be announced until later in the year, Culture Ireland sees Byrne’s role as helping it to define a new strategy for its cultural platform abroad.
“We need to look at how we can use new technology – whether web based, live streaming, or social networking – to magnify the presence of Irish art abroad. If we are investing in touring in the US by playing to people in a 300-seat theatre, then we’d be looking at how can we stream the performance, or send it out into the virtual ether to hugely multiply that experience. There is an artistic challenge in capturing the real experience, but if we can crack that, the audience could be in Shanghai or Moscow or Chicago or Omaha. It would never replace live performance – and nor would we want it to – but we could gain new audiences. The US will be a real proving ground for that. Gabriel is helping us with the overall concept, and he is also curating specific elements within the programme, including film projects.”
Niall Burgess has been consul general in New York for three years, and is a consistent advocate for the arts. “Ireland is still one of the most recognised brands in the US but we have to work hard to keep it that way,” he stresses, pointing out that “culture is very competitive in New York”.
He sees culture “as one of our largest and fastest-growing industries. There is a very large and partially untapped market for it in the US. As an export industry, it has great potential growth. Culture is one of our most important attractions for bringing tourists to Ireland. It is one of our greatest assets, and Byrne knows that.”
Burgess speaks of Byrne’s “vision” for the role of Cultural Ambassador. “A lot of it is around helping to promote a vision that is inclusive of the Irish diaspora. It’s only in the past few years with Culture Ireland that we’ve been able to put resources into getting our best performers out on the international stage.”
Byrne’s specific suitability for the role, as Burgess see it, in addition to the fact that he has a long-term interest in promoting the arts, is quite simply, that his name “opens doors.” It’s probably difficult to put a monetary value on the number of contacts and the type of access that the Irish-born, Golden Globe-winning actor has. Byrne has access to an influential network far beyond the range of virtually any Irish State employee, no matter how politically well-connected they might be. “In terms of working on a programme with premier venues, he can be extraordinarily helpful in guiding us,” Burgess stresses.
