Mr. Eamonn Moran:

I will address what will happen after the Creative Ireland programme and how we ensure that all schools, or as many as possible, can benefit from the lessons from Creative Ireland. We are conscious that the Creative Schools phase 1 pilot scheme is only for 150 schools. The aim is to double that number of schools and, as the project moves on, to increase those numbers. We know that increasing the numbers by 150 schools a year will not get to the 4,000 schools. It was never the intention. The idea was that, when we evaluated how successful or otherwise the Creative Schools project was, we would identify successful elements of that programme with a view to allowing schools in general to mainstream those activities. There would be a lot of learning from the initial actions and we would envisage that after Creative Ireland, they would be packaged into a programme that more schools could readily access that would not need the scaffolding and structures put in place by Creative Ireland that are necessary to facilitate this trialling of a number of initiatives. Approximately 74 schools are taking part in the creative clusters programme. We are at approximately 225 to 230 schools.

We are conscious that we do not want to wait until Creative Ireland is over to spread the word to other schools. Ms Banotti mentioned the portal set up under Creative Ireland. Under the Arts in Education Charter, which was launched by the Ministers with responsibility for arts and education in 2013 and which pre-dated Creative Ireland, a number of initiatives were put in place or identified as worth pursuing to allow schools to embrace and enhance arts in education. Some of those initiatives are finding form and substance in Creative Ireland. The genesis for the Creative Schools programme was the arts-rich schools programme, Arís, proposed in the charter. I would not have any concern that, at the end of Creative Ireland in 2022 or 2023, everything will fall flat in that the charter is already there. The Creative Ireland programme recently put in place an advisory group of experts across a number of Departments and the arts and creativity fields in general to advise the high-level steering group on the creative youth pillar as to the success of the implementation of its actions and, critically, to look at Creative Ireland and Creative Youth after 2022. They had a successful meeting last week which Ms Banotti was at where they looked at the issue of defining creativity. One of the aims of the project is to ensure that it will have a life after the Creative Ireland programme.