Remarks on receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts
UCD, 28th November 2013
Auditor Healy,
Dear students,
Go raibh maith agaibh as bhur fáilte sin. Tá mé thar a bheith sásta bheith anseo libh inniu.
I am pleased to have this opportunity to join you this evening in University College Dublin to receive the Arts Society’s Award for Contribution to the Arts. May I thank you, Auditor, as well as Vice-Auditor Ian Fahey, Award Convenor Zoe Forde and all the members of this Society for the honour bestowed upon me. May I also thank all of you gathered here, in this Theatre of the Drama Society, for your warm welcome.
It has been a privilege to have contact with the arts over so many decades, including being auditor of a University Arts Society and participating in inter-university drama.
Tonight I would like to share with you a few thoughts on some of the key junctures of my engagement over the past four decades, in favour of an emancipatory role for the arts and the artist in society. This, I hope, may be of some interest to those of you who are reflecting on the form of your own engagement with society at what must be a crucial, exhilarating and formative stage of the university years.
Tríd an 20ú Aois bhí díospóireacht bríomhar ar siúl ar fud na cruinne faoin chadreamh idir an ealaoín agus an sochaí. Tá an díospóireacht seo le braithe i ngach foirm ealaíne, sa phéintéireacht, sa dealbhóireacht, sa litríocht, sa cheól, sa drámaíocht agus sa scannánaíocht. Dar ndóigh bíonn tuairimí éagsúla ar an ábhar.
[Throughout the twentieth century, there has been, and not only in the Western world, an intense debate over the appropriate relationship between the arts and society. This debate can be traced in every art form, from painting, sculpture and literature to music, drama and film. On such a subject, opinions obviously differ.]
For proponents of a formalist approach, art ought to preserve its independence from all non-aesthetic categories. This was, for example, the position of such artists as the American painter Ad Reinhardt, according to whom the work of art and sociopolitical action were two watertight, separate realms. Art, he argued, could survive only by asserting its complete resistance to the world.
At the other end of the spectrum, were those who emphasized the serious responsibility of the artist towards society and the moral, and even political, consequences of art. Among the Penguin books on my shelves from early years is Ernst Fischer’s The Necessity of Art. A similar stance, in literature, was also articulated by the so-called “engaged literature” movement of the immediate post-World War II era, when the French existentialists, led by Jean-Paul Sartre, reacted against the creed of “art for art’s sake” and promulgated instead a vision of the artist’s conscious commitment to social and political transformation.
Within this vision, of course, further rifts could emerge, such as that between Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.
A specific version of this wider debate developed in Ireland in the 1970s with the emergence of what is commonly referred to as the “community arts movement” – that is, a form of artistic expression and activity centred around community engagement.
At the core of this movement was a preoccupation with the question of power and the right of people of all backgrounds – urban and rural, men and women, English and Irish speaking, natives and newcomers – to fully participate in cultural activity. The debate and the emerging movement also sought to blur the distinction between “high art” and “craft,” and suggested the idea that the artisan should receive just as much recognition for his work as the professional artist.
Place-making was another important dimension of community arts practice, based on the notion that a sense of place, of home, of neighbourhood, is critical to our living together and that the arts have distinctive powers to explore, mark and expand that sense of community.
There was a sense, too, that back through and before any debate on aesthetics, the most glorious period of Irish art saw no distinction between art and craft. Beauty did not change.
The community arts movement was thus rooted in the belief that art, in whatever form it comes, should be made accessible to everyone and brought back into the daily lives of citizens.
Such a conception of the arts, grounded in a philosophy of inclusiveness, is one that I have been attracted to put into practice throughout my public career, as an academic, a politician, a human rights activist and as a poet connected to public performance.
For eleven years I was Chairman of the Galway-Mayo Regional Arts Committee, a Committee which, from the 1970s onwards, developed new programmes, notably through the VECs, and pioneered such projects – novel in the Ireland of the time – as murals in schools, painting classes for everybody, composers in residence and so forth.
Cultural equality is not a theoretical concern, and accordingly, some of our programmes were very practical in their implementation. On one occasion, for example, we offered a ticket plus bus scheme for the benefit of outlying areas which had no venues for theatre performances or concerts.
Initiatives aimed at widening access to culture continued to thrive well into the 1980s, invigorated by community-based organisations and groups such as CAFE – Creative Arts For Everyone – or City Arts, here in Dublin. And discussions on the matter were stirred by the publication, in 1979, of Ciarán Benson’s report, “The place of the Arts in Irish Education.” Another lead campaigner was Sandy Fitzgerald, one of the founders of the CAFE, and indeed it was him who invited me to join the Board of City Arts.
These issues of access to and participation in the arts, of context and marginality, have not lost their significance. When speaking of public access, for instance, what public are we referring to? Isn’t it quite different to envisage the public as referring merely to members of an audience, or as citizens possessed of their own unique creative potential? In which case, access means far more than simply touring productions and exhibitions. It involves the direct participation of each citizen as a creative agent.
And this, in turn, raises further issues. How do setting and context, for instance, shape our access to the arts? What are the challenges facing the arts in an urban, as opposed to a rural setting? Or in an established theatre, as opposed to a prison? What of children, or those citizens with disabilities, who so often have been ignored? What possibilities are open to them?
When I became Minister for the Arts, in 1993, I had all that debate behind me. And I readily acknowledge the influence the Benson report has had on the policies I sought to implement between 1993 and 1997. Indeed, as a Minister who also had responsibility for broadcasting, I had, for example, to consider where I stood on the choice of constituting my fellow citizens as market segments, or as citizens with rights within a communicative order. The choice was one between active citizenship within the cultural space or passive consumption of cultural products.
In seeking to favour the widest possible access to culture, as I then endeavoured to do, my aim was also to recognize that, by enriching the capacity for community arts, we are liberating our citizens from the determinism of any narrow economic consumerism.
In fact it seems to me that – nowadays – the heart of the debate on the place of the arts in our society lies not so much in the opposition between an elitist versus an inclusive conception of culture as in the pressing need to rescue a version of ourselves – of Irish culture – that is defined in citizenship terms, and is celebrated with joy and freedom.
Put in Kantian terms, this amounts to saying that the arts are to be treated as ends and not as means. The arts and culture must never be residual to the market place. The cultural space is best seen as the space within which various forms of human activity, including economic activity, unfold, are renewed, recast, discarded, or reinvented.
The real challenge for the future of our society, therefore, lies in our ability to articulate a positive and inclusive discourse about the arts and artistic practice which leaves us with an enhanced conception of citizenship and a vision of human flourishing that goes beyond any utilitarian perspective. The challenge is to reaffirm that the value of the arts lies primarily in the quality of depth, intensity of vision, and loyalty to the infinite possibilities of the human imagination, that their practice can yield.
Mar fhocal scoir ba mhaith liom lúchair agus lánsástacht tríd an chruthaitheacht ealaíonta a ghuí ar gach uile mac léinn anseo anocht, agus guím go gcaithfidh sibh saolta níos sásúla agus níos déine dá bharr.
[May I conclude by saying that my wish for each and every one of the students who are present here tonight is that you experience joy and fulfilment in a practice of the arts which will enable you to live a more abundant and intense life, with and for others.]
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.