Dáil debates

Wednesday, 27 September 2017

Priority Questions

Creative Ireland Programme

3:05 pm

Photo of Niamh SmythNiamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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36. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the status of each of her actions for the first year of the implementation programme of Creative Ireland. [40938/17]

Photo of Niamh SmythNiamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Minister and the Minister of State back to the new term. I ask the Minister to outline to the House the status and the implementation of each pillar in the first year of Creative Ireland.

Photo of Heather HumphreysHeather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. I know she has a keen interest in this programme.

On 8 December 2016 the Creative Ireland programme was launched as the Government's legacy programme arising out of the Ireland 2016 centenary programme as the main implementation vehicle for the priorities identified in Culture 2025 - Éire Ildánach. The Creative Ireland programme is a high-level, high-ambition five-year initiative from 2017 to 2022 building up to the centenary of the foundation of the State, which aims to place creativity at the centre of public policy. The programme is being led by my Department in partnership with other Departments and agencies, local authorities, the third level sector, arts and culture organisations, including the national cultural institutions, media organisations and relevant non-governmental organisations. The launch document for the programme identified ten actions for 2017 under the five specific pillars, namely, enabling the creative potential of every child, enabling creativity in every community, investing in our creative and cultural infrastructure, Ireland as a centre of excellence in media production and unifying our global reputation. I am glad to report that there has been significant progress regarding the delivery of the ten actions identified for 2017. Briefly, the position is as follows.

Under pillar 1, my Department is drawing up a five-year creative children plan for the period 2018-22 in conjunction with the Departments of Education and Skills and Children and Youth Affairs and the Arts Council, and this will be launched later this year.

Regarding pillar 2, a culture team has been established in each of the 31 local authorities, and each local authority has produced a 2017 Creative Ireland plan and is in the process of drawing up a more detailed 2018 creative plan setting out a five-year plan for local creativity. The first Cruinniú na Cásca, Ireland's new national culture day, was launched on Easter Monday with the theme "Inclusion and Diversity", and consideration is now being given to the approach to the cruinniú in 2018. Following consultation with my Department, a pilot scheme to assist self-employed artists who have applied for jobseeker's allowance has been put in place by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection.

Regarding pillar 3, work is progressing on the preparation of plans for the development of each national cultural institution to 2022, as well as a five-year capital investment programme for the culture and heritage sector.

Photo of Alan FarrellAlan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister. We will come back to her.

Photo of Niamh SmythNiamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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I am sure the Minister will appreciate it is my job on the Opposition benches to interrogate and investigate how progress is being made. My biggest concern, as it would be for anyone in the artistic community, is implementation. It would be fair to say the Creative Ireland programme was launched in the glitziest way possible. The Department held a roadshow that possibly hit every county in the country, and I had the pleasure of attending it in Cavan and Monaghan. To me, it was very much a marketing and public relations exercise and many of the related statements were quite vague. I want to see the exact actions we are talking about. I know the Minister has touched on some of them. Perhaps we could talk a little about the arts in education pillar. One of the Minister's commitments is that every child in Ireland will be able to access music, drama and the visual arts. Most of our local authorities in this day and age are already doing that. Our ETBs are already doing so. It is nice to see that being brought together in a coherent way but much of that work was already being done. We have the arts in education charter, which was launched in 2013. There was a commitment in it to the local arts in education partnerships. Perhaps the Minister could talk to us a little about the actual implementation of that charter.

Photo of Heather HumphreysHeather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I am glad to say a lot of progress has been made, especially on pillar 1, which concerns enabling the creative potential of every child. We have had the teacher-artist training programme, which has been rolled out and extended to provide training for the largest number of teachers this year. Six centres in 2013 rolled out that arts in education training. It has now gone right across to all 21 education training centres. I was in Scoil Éanna in Ballybay only a couple of weeks ago and two teachers there had availed of the training and they are very much looking forward now to the next stage of it, which is the implementation of the creative children plan. That will be launched very shortly. We are working with the Departments of Education and Skills and Children and Youth Affairs in developing this further. This is the first time three Departments, the Arts Council and the national cultural institutions have all come together to develop and implement the plan. It is very important. Many things happened as part of Culture Night, which is getting very popular right across the country. There were loads of events in every single county this year. We are continuing to expand what we have but it is also very important that we all work together. It is a matter of engaging more children and more communities in the arts, and that is what this plan, Creative Ireland, is about. It is about working on a collaborative basis.

Photo of Niamh SmythNiamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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One thing I feel very strongly about, and which I have seen in the arts, is duplication. I would not want to see any duplication through what the Minister proposes to do in Creative Ireland of anything already in existence. For example, there are cultural teams and a cultural director of each local authority. I question whether there is a difference between them and what the arts officer already in place is doing. It is important to have a coherent approach to library services, museums and visual arts officers. However, is there a duplication between cultural teams and cultural officers of what arts officers were already doing in their county development plans and in their own jobs? I would have assumed it would have been part of their remit to feed in with the heritage officer, the librarians and so on as well.

The Minister mentioned her proposal and plan for the development of each national cultural institution and its plan for 2022. Again, I would be very surprised if all the national cultural institution were not already doing that and I would be surprised to think that was something new that they had to think about, not something that was already part of their role and remit and already implemented.

Finally, I ask the Minister in all her endeavours to ensure that arts education is made a priority.

Is any progress being made on the local arts and education partnerships, particularly as they are hugely important? We must not have duplication of schemes that already exist and are up and running.

3:15 pm

Photo of Heather HumphreysHeather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy is absolutely right that we do not want to see duplication. That is why, in 2016, many of the different arms of local authorities came together for the first time. We had the 2016 commemorative co-ordinators, an initiative that worked extremely well. I went back out to meet the different stakeholders in the local authorities and what they said to me was that they - the arts officers, the museum curators, the heritage officers and the different sections within the authorities - had worked together for the first time. This is a legacy programme from 2016. We have the creative co-ordinators working within the local authorities, working with communities and working with all of the different officers. They are all working together and the creative co-ordinator may at times be the arts officer, the museum curator or the heritage officer.

I met them all yesterday. They were meeting over two days at the National Concert Hall to consider their plans going forward. They are all very excited about this and they think it is the right way in terms of getting more engagement with the arts, first, through enabling the creative potential of children and, second, through community. They are all working collaboratively. The Deputy is exactly right when she says she does not want to see duplication, and that is why they are doing this together. We are, of course, working very closely with the Arts Council as well.