Have your say in shaping Creative Ireland in Cavan

Damian McCarney

 

A public consultation will be held in the Hotel Kilmore to feed into the plans for the ambitious Creative Ireland project. The project aims to nurture a love of, and talent for, the arts in young people as part of delivering a Culture and Creativity plan in every county.

County librarian Tom Sullivan has been appointed coordinator of the local culture team, charged with supporting Director of Service Eoin Doyle who is overseeing the project locally.

As part of the project, they hope to have arts events to mark a national day of commemoration on Easter Monday under the banner 'Cruinniú na Casca'.

For the 2016 Easter Rising events they had a year's notice to plan and received €124,000 in government funding. Unfortunately, by Mr Sullivan's own admission the “notice has been quite short” and funding, whilst promised, has not yet been provided. This has resulted in the organisation of a solitary Cruinniú na Casca event - an arts exhibition in Johnston Central Library.

“I as coordinator was only appointed a number of weeks ago, and the workshop hasn't been held, so there's not much time to work between now and Easter Monday.”

He added: “We will be rolling considerably more activities as the year goes on because we will have the time to organise them and the funding to put them in place.”

He's also optimistic that Cruinniú na Casca will take off properly next year.

The Creative Ireland report outlines ten initiatives (see below) which “will be completed and in place by the end of 2017”. This appears ambitious given that the first initiative reads: 'A national plan to enable every child in Ireland to access tuition in music, drama, art and coding.'

The Celt admits scepticism that this is possible to have “completed and in place by the end of 2017”.

“From reading the document it seems to be direct government policy, so resources will have to be put in place to implement this,” says Mr Sullivan, who notes elsewhere in the report it suggests that implementation of this will be over the lifetime of the plan, making it more feasible.

First up however for the local Creative Ireland team is to produce a Cultural and Creativity Plan for the coming years by this October. This will be informed by Monday's public workshop.

 

Events

Amongst the many arts and cultural events already organised for County Cavan this year include, Hacklers drama group producing the late Dermot Healy's play 'On Broken Wings' in Townhall Cavan in May. 'The Ballyhaise Project' meanwhile will see historian Ciaran Parker, woodwork specialist Joe Doherty, visual artists Kim McCafferty and Jackie O'Neill and her sister, folk star Lisa O'Neill engage with school children in an ambitious exhibition exploring the village's landscape.

Towards the end of the year, poet Noel Monahan will run a series of workshops with TY students on 'Word Farming' resulting in a performance illustrating the power of language. Myles Dungan and Joe Duffy, and Turtle Bunbury will give talks on the aftermath of 1916 in Cavan County Museum. There will be an exhibition to mark the anniversary of the 1867 Fenian Rising.

The Creative Ireland workshop will be held in the Hotel Kilmore, Cavan Town on Monday, April 10 at 6.30pm, and everyone's welcome and encouraged to go along.

 

 

According to the government's Creative Ireland report, the following ten initiatives will be completed and in place by the end of 2017: