Only for Druid and the Galway Arts Festival, Galway city may never have become a thriving place of business with bustling streets, shops, and bars. In short, the arts are essential to a healthy economy.
This is the view of Garry Hynes, the leading Irish theatre director and co-founder of Druid Theatre. She was speaking at the recent re-opening recent of Druid Lane Theatre, ahead of the company’s production of Tom Murphy’s The Gigli Concert.
Ms Hynes said this is “a time of great peril for the arts” given the drastic economic downturn and the recommendations of An Bord Snip, which, if implemented, could seriously hurt the arts in Ireland, and particularly in Galway.
An Bord Snip recommends that the Department of Arts, Sports, and Tourism may be abolished to save €104.8 million. It also proposed that funding to the Arts Council be cut and that the Irish Film Board and investment fund to be discontinued.
Ms Hynes said the arts are not “an optional extra” and that this message must be brought to the Government and that Galway needs “to say this out loud”.
“It’s absolutely outrageous that it could be suggested that we no longer have a minister for the arts,” she said. “It’s an extraordinary insult to the filmmakers of Ireland, that the Film Board, which is a creative organisation first and foremost, could just be sidelined into Enterprise. It’s senseless, it’s absolutely senseless in relation to what we know the arts can do.”
Ms Hynes said the arts have a crucial role in providing a city with a sense of life, colour, and vibrancy, and that a vibrant and healthy arts and cultural scene is an essential part of attracting business, industry, and investment into the city.
“I remember standing at the top of this street in 1978, and when you looked down this street, there were two functioning businesses, full time businesses,” Ms Hynes said. “That was McDonagh’s fish shop and Kenny’s bookshop. The rest of this area was entirely derelict.
“I want to claim now that it was Druid’s move into this area in 1979, the enlightened contribution made by local businesses, which was McDonagh’s, to give it to us at a peppercorn rent, our hard work, and the hard work of succeeding people that started what is out there now, where there are thousands of people, winter and summer, day in, day out, flooding up and down.
“This area did not start with pubs, although the pubs are making huge profits from it. This are did not start with businesses, although businesses are making huge profit from it. This area started with Druid.”
She also pointed out that the Galway Arts Festival, which began in 1978, also “draws hundreds and thousands of visitors to the town” and “generates huge amounts of money”.
Ms Hynes said the arts has “to lay claim to this” achievement.
“We have to say now that we cannot be ruled out,” she said, “we cannot be accorded a lower priority. We must speak up in the huge debate that is going to take place over the next six months, about what kind of society we want.”
