Arthur's Day - cynical marketing or a boost for the arts?

It’s just four years old, but has Arthur’s Day lost its froth already?

It’s a cynical marketing exercise, according to some musicians. No, it’s much-needed arts investment, others tell Jonathan deBurca Butler

TODAY, at 17.59 people will be asked to raise their pint ‘to Arthur’, signalling the start of an event that celebrates the creation of ‘the black stuff’. Arthur’s Day began four years ago to mark the 250th anniversary of a drink that is synonymous with Ireland, but has become an annual event that is tiresome to many people.

The debate is about alcohol and health. The Royal College of Physicians has spoken against the festival, reminding us, as if we needed to be, that Ireland has a problem with excessive drinking.

But along with the health debate is another centred on marketing and the arts. Arguably, the Arthur’s Day debate gathered pace when Christy Moore’s song slamming it got widespread coverage across the media. (Moore has himself used the comedy of ‘overindulgence’ in his songs, such as in ‘Delirium Tremens’).

Diageo is selling this year’s event as a partnership between the pint and the arts, so the timing of Moore’s release was unhelpful; particularly given Moore’s standing as that most Irish of Irishmen.

“Ultimately, it’s about bringing pints of Guinness, music and the pub together,” says Peter O’Brien, of Diageo. “I think that’s a very unique festival. Christy Moore is entitled to write a song, and that’s fine.

“I completely disagree with him and I’m fairly certain that the thousand of musicians who are playing and enjoying themselves, and getting good employment on Thursday, would likewise disagree with him.”

Maybe so, but there are musicians and actors, directors and writers all backing the Kildare balladeer, who himself has battled with drink.

Steve Wall, singer with The Walls, criticised Arthur’s Day last year, because he said it was not promoting Irish artists as it claimed.

Diageo would argue that this year they have addressed that issue by inviting more Irish artists to take part.

Mike Scott and The Waterboys will issue a three-track EP, entitled A Song for Arthur’s Day, on Thursday. The band has released a single of the same name on Soundcloud, and the Scot has been attacking the event from his Twitter page.

“Mike Scott’s song ‘Arthur’s Day in Dublin’ is brilliant,” says a representative from Facebook group Boycott Arthur’s Day (B.A.D.). “It’s part poem, part prayer, but it’s staring into the abyss. It’s sad and it’s quite frightening. It really is an omen.”

The B.A.D. Facebook page has 4,000 likes and has had the support of many people in Irish arts.

Film director Lenny Abrahamson and writer Marian Keyes have all weighed into the debate.

“We set up the campaign because, in conversation with other people in the music, literary and creative world, it became apparent that there was a sense that Diageo were selling this as a celebration of creativity and that rubbed people up the wrong way,” says the spokesperson. “We felt there was a huge degree of cultural misappropriation involved.

“Musicians were very unhappy and there had been considerable rumblings for a number of years that people didn’t see it as a celebration of creativity or music, they saw it as something that was a cynical misappropriation of Irish identity.

“We’ve spoken to musicians who participated in Arthur’s Day in the past, but would not do so again, because they realised they were being used for cynical purposes by an international drinks company who were piggy-backing on their creativity and their name.”

The spokesperson says that the event is not on an annual, fixed date, although it is usually in late September, and it falls on a Thursday, a day when many people get paid. The fact that it falls during many university and college fresher weeks is also contentious.

“A lot of freshers are just teenagers,” says the spokesperson. “So, essentially, you’re legally able to drink, but you’re just out of your parents’ house; from that perspective, we felt it was terribly cynical.”

“I think everybody is clear that there’s no compunction on anybody to go to a pub on Thursday and buy alcohol,” says O’Neill. “All of the musicians and acts that are performing on the night will deliver a responsible drinking message directly to their own fans, all of the pubs will have free water, the larger ticketed events will have free food, and we think they’re all things that we can do to help people enjoy a music festival.”

Arthur’s Day is not the only festival centred on alcohol this week.

Right across Europe, wine festivals are in full swing. In Spain, the Rioja Wine Festival, or festival of San Matteo, is being celebrated in the region’s capital, Logrono. The festival involves food, fireworks, parades and copious amounts of alcohol.

“I don’t think they can be compared,” says the B.A.D. representative. “A festival that’s celebrating a craft beer or wine is very often within the context of the culture, it’s very often within the context of people that are interested in artisan products, artisan foods.

“It’s totally different and, quite crucially, the demographic of people that would attend are adults.

“The crucial thing you have to remember about Arthur’s Day is that it’s flogging drink to young people, early in the day, in the middle of Freshers’ Week, while using bands as a vehicle to do so. As Declan O’Rourke said, Ireland does not need a day to celebrate alcohol. That’s the bottom line.”

Something to mull over, perhaps, while having a quiet pint…maybe on Friday.

Calling time on the day

“What we’re saying to the acts and their fans is simple; Diageo’s Arthur’s Day is a marketing exercise with the sole aim of increasing alcohol consumption without any regard to the harm caused.”

— Ian Power, spokesperson for SpunOut.ie

“What would Yeats and Luke Kelly make of Arthur’s Day?”

— Mike Scott, musician.

“The idea that people go out and get absolutely pissed on a day that’s made up by marketing guys — that’s a cynical exercise in exploitation in a country that has a huge problem with binge drinking.”

— Gabriel Byrne, actor

“I like the occasional pint of Guinness but every year, post the horror of Arthur’s Day, I’m seriously tempted to switch to Beamish. Let’s get off our puke-sodden knees … and give this cynical appropriation of a national institution a big collective finger.”

— Lenny Abrahamson, Irish filmmaker.