Ms Majella O'Neill Collins:

It is. We have 64 students who have gone through over the last 15 years. None of those students has just left and put their tools away. They are practising artists, they do PhDs, they travel abroad and they are involved in arts and health. There is a plethora of things they are involved in. The West Cork Arts Centre in Skibbereen helps to give them jobs and everything feeds into everything else, but the most important thing is the community's involvement. There is ownership there. If a community feels the respect when people come in, that the community is part of it also, then the world is the artist's oyster at that point. We have an 86 year old graduate. When she embarked on the course everyone thought she was definitely going to go down a very safe route artistically. This student, however, became very involved in video. She came to the course painting and drawing, but she actually learned technology and has just opened an exhibition. The students who have gone on keep coming back.

I was so proud on the day that Dr. Michael Birchall from the Tate Modern came over from Liverpool. I thought that we had arrived because people outside of Ireland were now looking at us. Yet, we use all our energy to basically keep the lights on because the funding does not come. Somewhere along the line some members of the committee will have to come and see us. They should do so at the end of May when the degree students put on an exhibition in the abbey. The abbey is not open during the year but it opens for those two days.