Ms Michelle Carew:

I am thankful for the opportunity to address this point. I feel it would be remiss of me not to quickly jump back to Senator Warfield's questions on public art. Not to repeat anything my colleagues said, I note that the partnership with local authorities has been central to a flourishing of street art across the country. In Cork, we have had the development of the Ardú Street Art Initiative. This is one of the few happy outcomes of the pandemic. It came about through investment from the city council via Creative Ireland. It has been greatly welcomed across the city and has led to a regrowth in and appreciation of street art.

Moving on to the question of how we are providing opportunities and engaging across communities in the arts and what might be a recommendation for how this could be addressed in future, in our experience, and I will defer to my colleague, Ms Siobhán Clancy, to speak about some specific examples of projects, this is about longevity and long-term sustained engagement. I would welcome, for example, the addition of opportunities through Creative Ireland and the Creative Communities initiative and increased Arts Council funding and investment in programmes such as the Creative Places award for local communities. I refer to the development of these types of programmes and a requirement for organisations to develop policies around inclusion, diversity and equality.

These are all long-term and sustainable efforts to, in a root and branch fashion, shift the idea and reality of who gets to make, lead and govern the arts in Ireland. I say this because there needs to be a step-change in the whole picture. It needs to move into step with the demographic of the population. In answering, then, it is programmes and projects that start from the agency of the people involved. These need to be long-term. Examples include early years projects, starting with children up to four years of age. I refer to programmes like the BEAG initiative in Cork city. Ms Clancy might speak about this aspect.