The State and the arts: A healthy intersection

Should the arts be deployed to repair the damage done to Ireland's image? Or do politics and the arts make for awkward bedfellows? JOHN FANNINGlooks at the role of the arts in building Brand Ireland

Can the arts play a role in escaping the economic morass in which we find ourselves? It’s a debate that continues to rumble on. Writing in these pages recently, under the headline, “No, Minister: the arts cannot save Ireland”, Mick Heaney poured cold water on “the concept of culture as a national panacea” and on any connection between a rich cultural heritage and a vibrant economy.

At a more cerebral level, the poet, academic and critic Gerald Dawe, in a recent issue of the Stinging Fly, argued that the arts could not be expected to be “a substitute to a solution for economic failure” and that it would not be healthy for the artist to be seen to be “cosying up to the political elite in the name of ‘brand’ Ireland”. Dawe’s article used the phrase “an unhealthy intersection” in its headline, and it’s as good a starting point as any to begin unravelling the strands in this debate, which often get confused.

1 The long-standing argument about the arts and politics and whether the twain should ever meet

This was the subject of a lively and often acrimonious debate in the 1970s, when the Northern Ireland conflict was at its height. The phrase “unhealthy intersection” came from Conor Cruise O’Brien, who argued that art must maintain a neutral attitude to matters political and that artistic integrity can be threatened only by contamination with the body politic.

The debate was in full flow when the Crane Bag periodical appeared in 1978; in the first issue Francis Stuart argued against the artist having anything to do with politics on the grounds that politics is the technique of preserving the coherence and welfare of the community, and art the expanding of individual perception, so that there will inevitably be a confrontation between the two.

I would suggest that such a confrontation would be healthy, but in the same issue one of the joint editors, Richard Kearney, recruited Thomas Mann in support: “The aesthetic need in man is so deeply rooted that it splices into one of the apparently conflicting areas of art and politics; to achieve this communion art must be prepared to abdicate its throne of proud and unprincipled autonomy and to become conversant with the everyday affairs of man – the political.”

Kearney concluded with what, I believe, should be the last words on this aspect of the subject: “Art without politics is superhuman, politics without art is subhuman, either without the other is inhuman.”

The artistic response to the Northern Ireland conflict of the five great elders of Irish poetry provides an example of the healthy intersection between art and politics. It has been a consistent presence in Seamus Heaney’s poetry and has helped to illuminate the complexity of the problem, especially for people in the republic who were not directly involved. Heaney has ignored and defied criticism of his approach, ranging from Desmond Fennell’s wrong-headed attack in the 1980s, in a pamphlet entitled Whatever You Say, Say Nothing: Why Seamus Heaney is Number One, to the Republican activist who confronted the poet on a train, inspiring the following line in the poem Flight Path: “When, for f**k’s sake, are you going to write / Something for us?” and the blunt but justifiable response: “If I do write something / Whatever it is I’ll be writing for myself.”

Thomas Kinsella’s angry but deeply felt response to the Widgery tribunal’s verdict on Bloody Sunday attracted widespread criticism, but the recently released Saville report vindicated the poet’s stance. (Dawe, it’s worth mentioning, was one of the most prominent defenders of Kinsella at the time, arguing that the poem had “helped to cauterise the wound”.)

Derek Mahon has often been wrongly criticised for remaining above the fray, but he has returned to the subject at regular intervals, trying to reflect the attitude of a humane Ulster Protestant while understanding, in the same way that Heaney does, from across the divide “the exact and tribal nature” of the conflict:

What middle class twits we are

To imagine for one second

That our privileged ideals

Are divine wisdom, and the dim

Forms that kneel at noon

In the city not ourselves.

Just before the first stirrings of the Troubles to come were quietly simmering, in the mid-1960s, the first sections of John Montague’s ambitious and prescient prologue to the entire conflict, The Rough Field, started to appear; they included the prophetic lines “Old moulds are broken in the North / in the dark streets firing starts”. These lines were famously quoted by the then taoiseach, Jack Lynch.

Finally, as the peace process wound its weary way to a conclusion, as we approached the new millennium, Michael Longley wrote an appropriate, imaginative and moving epilogue. “I get down on my knees and do what must be done / and kiss Achilles’ hand, the killer of my son.”

It will be impossible for future historians of Northern Ireland in the second half of the 20th century to ignore the significance of the poetic response of the time.

2 Should we try harder to make more money from Ireland's cultural reputation?

This debate seems to have arisen directly from the Global Irish Economic Forum, held at Farmleigh in 2009 to examine how Ireland’s great and good could contribute to economic recovery. One of the five themes of the conference was promoting Brand Ireland through our global cultural profile. Little of substance emerged from the conference except for the discussions under this heading, which prompted an excited media to spend a few weeks debating how to “monetise our culture”.

This unfortunate phrase, typifying business’s penchant for mangled neologisms that obscure the truth – we’re not letting people go: we’re “downsizing” – confirms the arts’ worst suspicion of business motives. It would have been better to stick to plain English: how do we make more money from our cultural reputation?

The immediate outcome from Farmleigh was the establishment of an online community, Cultural Odyssey, which attracted widespread support from artists and academics participating in debate and discussion of ideas. The project was based on the fashionable digital concepts of co-creation and crowdsourcing, but creating an online space and expecting instant “creation” is about as realistic as saying monetise and expecting gold bars to fall on your head. The project appears to have fizzled out without any definitive conclusions, but that shouldn’t stop a more strategic attempt to create more employment and money from Ireland’s enviable cultural reputation.

3 Should Ireland's literary reputation be part of the country's overall national image?

The question of whether Ireland’s literary reputation forms part of the nation’s brand image should be self-evident. Unfortunately the very mention of brand image all too often provokes apoplexy among certain sections of the artistic community. There’s no reason why this should be the case.

A country’s brand image is merely the sum of the associations, images, opinions and attributes that come into people’s minds when that country’s name is mentioned. Given Ireland’s world-renowned and almost wholly positive literary reputation, it should hardly be a surprise that mention of the country evokes positive literary associations. Our literary reputation is therefore inextricably bound up with our overall brand image.

The use of a word with predominantly business associations is a legitimate cause for concern, and it has been suggested that the word reputation should be used instead. But “brand” has, for better or worse, flown the business nest and is in widespread use in the rest of the world, so we might as well stick with it.

Nations have brand images whether they like it or not. We can’t stop people in the rest of the world having associations, impressions, opinions and images of Ireland any more than we can stop Google from making a summary of those images available at the click of a mouse. The only power we have is to play an active role in managing Ireland’s brand. As more countries set up formal arrangements with this objective in mind, Palestine being the latest example, we have much option.

The one proviso is that in considering Ireland’s brand image we need to take into account its spiritual soul as well as its economic body. The fact that for the past 50 years or more we have allowed societal objectives to be subordinated to economic imperatives is no reason to assume we should continue to repeat the mistake.

4 Should we deploy Ireland's arts community to repair the country's damaged economic brand?

The question of whether Irish arts, in particular writers, should be pressed into service in the interests of enhancing Brand Ireland has been at the heart of the most recent debate about the arts. Derek Mahon has called the notion of an artistic dimension to Brand Ireland “dense and philistine”. Lurking behind this contentious issue is the unspoken fear that being pressed into service implies being asked to write something favourable, or not unfavourable, about the country. This would be as daft as it would be self-defeating.

In any case there is a long tradition in Ireland of writers being pressed into service, from WB Yeats’s appointment to the Senate by the first Irish government to Seamus Heaney’s attendance at the top table for the State dinner in honour of Queen Elizabeth. One suspects neither writer felt that either invitation was an instance of cosying up to the political elite, yet in both cases it emphasised the importance attached by the State, and through them the people, to the arts.

Whether we like it or not both invitations enhanced Ireland’s brand image. A reputation for cultural creativity is attractive to businesses considering investing in Ireland because it suggests a climate of innovation and counterintuitive thinking, a place where a thought might grow. It helps tourism – cultural tourism is the fastest-growing category within the sector – and it helps our exports because it facilitates people in other countries to make a culturally attractive statement about themselves.

A few years ago one of the world’s leading consumer – goods companies held a conference in Ireland for a group of its executives, drawn from all over the world, who had excelled in their positions during that year. The theme of the conference was creativity and the cultivation of the imagination, and among the speakers were a prominent Irish playwright and poet. Both were paid for their contributions, but they seemed to enjoy the experience, and the audience were enthralled, so much so that during the intervals they expressed their envy to their Irish colleagues at their good fortune in having so many gifted writers and storytellers in their midst. Thus Ireland’s brand image was enhanced at no loss to artistic integrity.

Writing in The Irish Timesjust over a year ago, Enda O'Doherty summed up the issue well: "The poet looks in the mirror in the morning and is pleased to see yet again a fearless truth-teller. The State does not wish – indeed would not dare – to change or command his words, but wonders if they might be of some use. In these hard times, perhaps the poet should hold his nose, give the gift of his person to the commonality and, unaccustomed as he is to the practice, leave just one of his feet on the ground."