Galway's Writers' Centre Seeks Meeting With City Council

galway | arts and media | press release Monday April 30, 2007 17:51 by Fred Johnston - Manager - Western Writers' Centre - Ionad Scribhneoiri Chaitlin Maude westernwriters at eircom dot net 34 Nuns Island, Galway 091.533595

Funding Should be Discussed at Council Level

Is the way now open for all Galway arts' groups to seek inclusion in Council meeting agendas and to present their case for funding on a direct basis?

The Western Writers' Centre - Ionad Scribhneoiri Chaitlin Maud - has written to the City Manager, Mr Joe McGrath, requesting a meeting to discuss funding for the Centre. According to the Centre's Manager, writer and critic Fred Johnston, the recent admission of a senior executive of Galway Arts Festival to a Council meeting in order to discuss additional funding of €160,000 opens the gate to all arts' organisations and groups in the city similarly to present their funding case at Council meeting level.
"The precedent having been set, there can be advanced no reasonable argument justifying the exclusion of other Galway arts organisations from presenting their case in like manner. All arts' groups in the City contribute to the culture welfare of the city. Any suggestion, however traditionally accepted, that one group has privileged access to a Council meeting, or can have a funding proposal put on the Council's agenda while others are excluded, belongs to a less culturally-developed Galway."
The fact that this funding proposal was set down in the middle of the current water-crisis is another day's argument, he says. But the city has grown culturally diverse since the early days of Galway Arts Festival. There are many more - and equally exciting - cultural mouths to feed and besides, it is unacceptable that Galway Arts Festival can continue to have such direct access to the City Council when Project '06 clearly pointed up the deficiencies in the Festival and the need for a more co-operative approach to the Arts in the City. Though not claiming to speak for the organisers, he added that it's as if the City Manager has decided to ignore Project '06 and what it was saying.
"So I wrote to Mr Joe McGrath, City Manager, and requested a meeting to discuss Western Writers' Centre funding and that our funding situation be similarly placed on the Council agenda for discussion. He replied that he would 'revert' to me."