The Arts Council brought along Brendan Gleeson and Colum McCann who crucially they were able to demonstrate were supported in the early stage of their career by arts council funding. Theatre Forum brought Sebastian Barry and according to reports Fiach MacConghaile, Gabriel Byrne and Garry Hynes were all their too.
Like all lobbying, momentum is key and with the recent coverage of National Campaign for the Arts and with two strong presentations there is hope that some of those who will be making budget decisions in the next few months might be listening.
Here’s a little bit of what was said – Pat Moylan (chair of Arts Council)
The Arts Council supports 3,000 jobs (both directly and indirectly) with the €73 million allocation it receives from the taxpayer. In turn, those organisations pay €65 million in direct and indirect taxes each year. “Artists, actors, musicians and all those in the broad arts family – work with a sense of vocation. Certainly they gain much personal satisfaction when their work goes well. But to follow this way of life they are prepared to submit to low earnings, periods of no earnings, to continuous assessment of their work and talent – much of it public, to insecurity of employment or the loneliness of working in front of a computer or canvas. There are no pension schemes, no lavish expenses, no sinecures. In other words there is no fat! Funding cuts go straight to the bone.
Edited to add Media Coverage of the Event (thanks to Theatre Forum)
Six One News (14 October) Morning Ireland 1 (15 October): Conor Hunt report Morning Ireland 2 (15 October): Colum McCann (speaker at the Committee) has been shortlisted for US National Book Awards Irish Independent (15 October): Artists hope pen is mightier than economic slash-hook, Lise Hand Irish Times (15 October): Artists lobby politicians to maintain funding, Deirdre Falvey Irish Examiner (15 October): Gleeson: Film plans will collapse if Bord Snip implemented, Conor Ryan
You might have seen a few articles and letters to various editors about the the value of the arts flying about at the moment. Following on from the Bord Snip report and now the Commission on Taxation report which threatens the Artists Tax Exemption many in the arts community are determined to fight for funding, recognition and the arts infrastructure. CBI is participating in the National Campaign.
Follow these links for a selection of relevant sites and articles. You can also follow the campaign on Twitter – @campaign4arts.
Anthony Browne was announced this morning (9 June) as the new Children’s Laureate. He succeeds Michael Rosen, and will serve a two-year term.
Browne is the author and illustrator of acclaimed books including Gorilla, Voices in the Park, and Zoo. He has won the Kate Greenaway Medal twice, the Kurt Maschler Emil award three times, and the Hans Christian Anderson award.
Edited to add that Michael Rosen outgoing laureate has yet another lovely piece in the Guardian today. and More information from Anthony Browne also in the guardian.
More international awards for work with children and books and reading…
The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award was announced today in Bologne. The swedes take the legacy of Lindgren very seriously and every year they make an award to an individual, individuals or organisations who are active in reading promotion. And by serious I mean – the prize totals SEK 5 million (equivalent to approx. USD 578,000, 445,000 EUR). Lindgren is an extraordinarily important figure in children’s books and the Swedes are determined to celebrate her with this important prize.
As they say
“The prize aims to strengthen and increase interest in children’s and young people’s literature globally. The award is designed to strengthen children’s rights at global level.
This year’s recipient is Tamer Institute for Community Education, Palestine.
Tamer Institute for Community Education
The Tamer Institute for Community Education in Ramallah is an independent organisation that has carried out reading promotion work for children and young people in West Bank and Gaza since 1989. The Tamer Institute was founded to give children access to books and alternative learning as children’s and young people’s schooling, leisure time and lives suffered from the troubles in the area. The Tamer Institute also hands out reading passports. Holders get a stamp for every book they have read. This is a clear symbol of the fact that there are no borders for those who can read books. As Astrid Lindgren said: “Good children’s literature gives the child a place in the world and the world a place in the child”.
The Tamer Institute is the hub of a network that works with writing workshops, storytelling, drama and literary discussion for children and young people. They supply libraries with children’s books and they train librarians and parents. A national reading campaign is organised every year, culminating with National Reading Week. In 2008, the campaign reached 52,000 children in refugee camps and remote villages and communities, who took part in literary discussion, drama and drawing and writing workshops.
The Tamer Institute also carries out youth activities. The young people, who have often participated in Tamer’s work since they were children, publish their own newspaper, Yara´at, among other things. They use it to publish their thoughts, poems and stories. When the Tamer Institute was founded, there were virtually no Palestinian children’s books. The organisation has now published more than 130 titles and several of the children who attended the Tamer Institute’s writing workshops have started to write their own books as adults.
Despite difficult circumstances, the Tamer Institute works tirelessly on many levels to create a better situation for Palestinian children and young people via literature. Their conviction that words can tear down walls has resulted in innovative reading promotion activities of an unusual breadth, for which reason the Tamer Institute has been awarded the 2009 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
The biggest change comes in Year 7, which statistically is also when there’s the biggest drop off in reading – especially in boys. Now, it perhaps seems obvious that the withering of originality is greatly caused by reading less. But I think it’s also the other way round: they read less because their creative spark is consistently doused. Their connection with stories, with ideas and imagination, is stifled by the school environment. If the fun has gone from stories, why read?
When boys are at that age, we’re basically just little cave men. We have simple tastes, which – in some cases – we never grow out of. I firmly believe that most of the cave paintings that have been found around the world were painted by men, simply because they are largely pictures of a buffalo or a mammoth being shot in the arse with an arrow. If women had been doing the painting, they would be pictures of marriages, girls becoming best friends, or people sitting round dealing with social issues. Or they might possibly be recording the invention of the shoe (I wasn’t sure if I’d get away with that one). But the boys wanted to shoot a mammoth in the arse with an arrow and six thousand years later, we haven’t changed.
Notes from last year’s forum are now available online – here.
They make interesting reading, especially as the intervening period has brought yet more economic instability.
The plan is to follow this up with another event as part of Dublin Book Festival in early March. This event is likely to more focussed on discussing some practical actions for the sector.
Don’t forget to re-read the brilliant discussion that followed the event over on Sir David Maybury’s blog.
The position of children’s laureate is a high profile one in Britain. Especially as the current holder Micheal Rosen seems to have the gift of bilocation and appears in every single children’s books related media piece or event. What is shows is that with a media friendly hook like the laureate you can generate increased profile and public awareness.
An Irish children’s laureate has been proprosed at a number of events recently including some arts council consultation meetings and yesterday’s CBI Cle forum (David has some good notes on this, there will be a record of it online on CBI’s site in coming weeks).
A key figure with a strong profile might be just what the Irish children’s books scene needs. Who that writer/illustrator might be is a whole other question!
Meanwhile the process of choosing Michael’s sucessor in the UK is underway.
Many of you might have spotted an article in Guardian/Observer featuring Philip Pullman’s appeal to a comprehensive in Chesterfield to keep its library open. Meadows Community School is ditching their library (and librarian) in favour of a ‘virtual learning environment’ and a reading room (without librarian).
Author Alan Gibbons has been motivating a campaign about similar issues – you can follow progress over on his blog. He’s even managed to weave in Obamania with these quotes
Guardians of truth and knowledge, librarians must be thanked for their role as champions of privacy, literacy, independent thinking, and most of all reading.
The critical importance of language, of writing, of reading, of communication, of books as a means of transmitting culture and binding us together as a people.
The library represents a window to a larger world, the place where we’ve always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts.
In an Irish context the evidence overwhelmingly points to the success of school libraries. The snappily titled Junior Certificate Support Programme Demonstration Library Project continues to show what can be achieved when a properly resourced and dedicated space is contributed to the school environment. The Room for Reading Report on the project is long but a terrific source of evidence of the importance of school libraries in Ireland. As one young reader said
It’s brilliant, you can learn more and learn about things you know nothing about and it helps with project work. It’s easier to learn and its very relaxing.”
Fighting Words will be operational in January 2009 and the website is now up and running with some more details about class visits and volunteering.
Coincidentally over on TED.com they have added a summary of the Dave Eggers presentation that explains the genesis of 826 Valencia which in turn is the genesis of Fighting Words.
There is a longer version of the Dave Eggers presentation below – well worth the 24 mins.
If Kids Made the Reading Rules is finished and winging its way around the country to libraries and schools. Official launch is next week in Trim Library, with the kids involved and Norma McDermott, Director of the Library Council doing the launching honours. So far its been getting a great response. You can download the poster and read more background to the project over on the CBI main site
You can catch the young participants talking about the project news2day site over on rte.ie/news2day or it has found it’s way to youtube aswell.
Posted by veryhungrycaterpillar 
Posted by veryhungrycaterpillar 
Posted by veryhungrycaterpillar 
