Ms Rose McHugh:

Education is very important for the Crawford, which has a full-time education person with responsibility in the area. In every exhibition we run, a great deal of detailed work is done at the planning stage and education is a very important part of that. We have digitised the entire collection and it is used quite a bit by primary, secondary and university students. The VEC, or ETB as it now is, has in fact been very good to us and we have a very good relationship with it. We work a great deal with schools and run a number of painting and drawing programmes for teenagers which are always booked out. There is an area which it would be useful to develop. The Crawford School of Art used to be housed with us but moved out in 1980. I have asked the principal of the school to come on board our sub-committee for artistic policy because it is important that we interact and engage with those students who are coming up. I have met with her and she has agreed to join the sub-committee to see what areas we can work on together. It is in our interest to work with the students who are studying art and are a captive audience. We should be involving them. We have had some very good meetings and the plan is to work with the principal on our sub-committee. We work with all primary and secondary schools throughout Cork and the region. Education is very important for us.