Arts and Minds

(published in The College View, February 2009)

It’s all over our newspapers, our televisions and our radio sets. Businesses are using it for all manner of promotional gimmicks. It’s the taxi-man’s topic of conversation du jour. And we’re blaming it for everything from job-losses to ingrown toenails. As Rolf Harris might say: “Can you tell what it is yet?”

The Recession really is inescapable. But as exasperating as it might be to hear people whinge and complain about it constantly, few would deny that the economic downturn has had very real implications for many facets of our society.

As prophesised by the doomsayers, unemployment has risen steadily, consumer spending has dropped and national debt continues to mount. Interest groups can protest all they want, but Brian Lenihan and his cohorts have decided that tightening governmental purse strings is the best approach to take to salvage our tattered economy and that’s unlikely to change.

With less tangible benefits than, say, public transport or healthcare, the cultural arts are perceived as more ‘dispensable’ and, as such, are a likely target for cutbacks. So, is Ireland’s relatively lively arts scene fated to wither and die or is there, perhaps, a silver lining to this big R-shaped cloud?

With less funding to share round, the volume of projects receiving Arts Council funding is inevitably going to drop. However, if creative types are forced to raise the standard of their work in order to secure grants and bursaries over rival applicants, it’s possible that we’ll benefit from an improved quality of output. Moreover, less investment in the arts will encourage greater levels of innovation and lateral thinking as artists are forced to improvise alternative, more cost-effective ways of ‘realising their visions’.

Editor of ‘Vanity Fair’, Graydon Carter, recently remarked that, during the Great Depression in the 1930’s, “creative talent flowered as in no other period of the last century” in the United States. Carter claimed that, in the period of economic turmoil following the Wall Street Collapse, American culture “stopped being all about money, and the country survived and ultimately flourished.”

Although it might be little consolation to those reluctantly joining the back of the dole queues, a perk of being unemployed is that it affords people a lot more free time. For some, this time might be invested in lying in for an extra couple of hours in the morning or catching up with ‘Oprah’, but others may use their decongested schedules as an opportunity to explore their own creativity. It’s only a matter of time before we see plumbers turned poets, receptionists turned rock-singers and school principals turned sculptors, as people get the chance to hone creative talents they’ve previously ignored in favour of a 9 to 5.

A whole generation of Irish people have grown up under the auspices of beloved Celtic Tiger, blissfully unaware of previous economic difficulties that blighted our dear nation. Undesirable as experiencing financial hardships might be, it’s bound to expand our horizons somewhat and maybe even inspire a little creativity. Will St. Leger’s ‘Free Art Friday’, held last month, is just one example of a number of recent cultural events inspired by the economic downturn.

Poverty was a major component of the Irish identity until relatively recently so perhaps the current economic gloom will foster a greater understanding of the art and culture that predated our prosperity. It’s unlikely that a revival of sean-nós story-telling and set-dancing will sweep the nation but some might be surprised to discover just how much fun can be had on a shoestring budget.

Perhaps the key to the question as to whether culture will flourish or flounder lies in the fact that, when times get tough, the arts tend to assume a greater significance.

When we tire of dreary news reports and ‘insufficient funds’ messages, the arts can offer a form of escapism, reassuring us that things have been better and reminding us that things could be worse. Perhaps more importantly, the arts provide us with necessary outlets to express our frustrations, our disappointments, our fears, and our hopes for a brighter, recessionless future.

[Image: Fine Art Blog]