Wide cultural appetite in a county with a rich artistic heritage

County Cork has a wide range of artistic content to enjoy, as Ian McDonagh, Arts Officer with Cork County Council, outlines to Colette Sheridan

Opening event for Small Things Like These, part of an extensive programme of exhibitions at the Council’s LHQ exhibition space. The first open call group show and included over 90 small works in various media by 85 artists.

Cork County Council Arts Services play a vital role in the community, supporting the county’s vibrant arts sector and promoting greater public engagement and participation in the arts.

In the context of the Council’s 125-year history, the Arts Service is a relatively new service, initiated in 1996 with the support of the Arts Council. Over this time its role has developed and expanded to include a raft of services that support local arts provision in the county.

Arts services now include dedicated funding to locally based arts organisations in every part of the county, bursary support for creative artists to support the making of new original work, residencies and work opportunities for artists and arts workers, commissioning art for public spaces, providing advice and training for artists and arts organisations, and creating new opportunities for public enjoyment of the arts.

Promoting ‘First Cut!’ Youth Film Festival in the Regal Cinema in Youghal, which takes place every March: Max Le Cain, programme manager, Una Feely, festival producer, Ian McDonagh, County Arts Officer, screening over 200 films created by emerging filmmakers in Ireland. 

Ian McDonagh is the County Council Arts Officer, heading a team of six staff.

Ian says: “From a functional perspective we work alongside our colleagues in the library service; it’s an important relationship. There are 25 libraries across the county. In the early days of the Arts service a lot of the work would have focused on developing new cultural programming across all of our branches. This would have included developing the Bealtaine Festival with a focus on creativity for older people, the Summer Arts programme for young people and expanding our Children’s book festival activities.

“We see libraries as important local cultural centres and these spaces are used by various community cultural groups. There are library-based writing groups, readers groups, and knitting groups. There are Irish language-speaking groups and art groups that show regularly in the libraries.

“The library service has changed dramatically from being very much a lending and information service to fulfilling its remit which is about (improving) the quality of life within local communities. Libraries are seen by the public as being very open and welcoming places. Our experience is that people find this environment comfortable to come into.

“I really have to hand it to our colleagues in the libraries. They work hard to promote those spaces within the local community.”

A Green Rope for Sherkin: Based on a vernacular heritage practice, artist William Bock delivered a rope-making workshop made from wild plants growing on Sherkin Island. Image courtesy of the artist, Creative Places West Cork Islands and Sherkin Island Development Society

Another area of our work is in Arts Development. A good example of this is the number of new arts festivals which the Arts Office has initiated or supported to develop over the years. Back in 1996, there were no literary festivals in County Cork. The Arts Service saw an opportunity to create a literary fringe festival at Bantry Library around the West Cork Chamber Music Festival.

“Over the years, we began to build on that with a series of lunchtime readings. Our first writer-in-residence was the late Denise Hall, who did an enormous amount of work to promote the literary fringe. Following her residency, local publisher Clem Cairns, who had set up Fish Publishing in Bantry, took over artistic direction and began to develop from being a fringe event to a fully-fledged festival.

Under his leadership, the festival grew to a point where West Cork Music offered to take over its management entirely. From having a small attendance at readings in Bantry Library in 1997, a full-scale major festival has evolved. It’s gone from strength to strength under Denyse Woods stewardship and now with Eimear O’Herlihy as the artistic director.”

The beautifully refurbished Kinsale Library, just one of Co Cork’s 25 libraries maintained by Cork County Council.

Another Festival initiative which has proved to be incredibly successful is the West Cork fit-up Theatre Festival. This grew out of conversations with theatre director Geoff Gould about growing audience for live theatre in rural locations in the county. Geoff’s lightbulb moment was to look back to the great days of touring professional theatre in rural Ireland.

The fit-ups were repertory companies made up of professional actors which had their origins in the 19th century. In Ireland in the 1930s, there would have been up to 60 fit-up groups. The best known of these was Anew McMaster’s which toured throughout ireland often to rural towns and villages. The West Cork Fit-Up Theatre Festival was started in 2009. In the past 15 years, it has grown a substantial and loyal audience touring to venues all over West Cork every summer.

“More recently, we have also started a winter fit-up festival in North and East Cork,” said Ian. “The Fit-Up festival promotes new Irish writing and we have staged shows by the Cork playwright Katie Holly, Pat Kinnevane, Seamus O’Rourke and many others.

“Other Arts Development work includes work to promote creative activity for harder to reach sections of our community. An example is the West Cork Arts for Health programme. This is a managed arts programme in all community hospitals and day care centres in the West Cork Municipal area. It is a partnership between Cork County Council, Cork ETB and the HSE Cork Kerry Community Healthcare.

“The overall programme is managed by Uilinn, West Cork Arts Centre and is facilitated by group of skilled artists. We have found that access to and engagement with the arts in improves the quality of life for individuals in residential and day-care. By being integrated into the culture of the care setting, the Arts for Health programme allows the ideas and individual creative interests of the participants to be nurtured, developed and implemented over time.

“Arts for Health is now in operation for over twenty years and has established a national reputation for the quality of its work. More recently our annual development programme has also included work with refugee and immigrant groups. We have delivered projects in Direct Provision settings in Millstreet, Glounthaune and Clonakilty. A public focus of some of this work will be Africa Day when we celebrate the cultural traditions and creativity of some of the groups we work.”

Graham Norton, speaking in the Maritime Hotel, Bantry at the hugely popular West Cork Literary Festival.

This year, Africa day will take place on Saturday, May 25th. The Arts Office has led the development of a number of youth Arts initiatives and has been involved in establishing youth theatre resources in various parts of the county.

One of its longest-running programmes is Cork Young Filmmakers which is operated in conjunction with Cork Film Centre. The project provides schools-based introduction to filmmaking programmes through the county’s secondary schools.

Each summer, young people have the opportunity to take place in summer film-making camps in Midelton, Mallow, Bandon and other locations. An output from this programme is the First Cut Youth Film Festival in Youghal which is now well established as a national festival featuring excellent films made by young people from primary to third level.

Briery Gap to reopen

The Council is supporting capital investment in the arts. An important project this year is the re-opening of the Briery Gap Cultural Centre in Macroom, which has been closed since a disastrous fire in 2016.

This project has involved a complete rebuild of the facility. When it reopens in the Autumn it will house the town’s new library and will have a state-of-the-art theatre and cinema facility with seating capacity for over 200.

The Arts Office is responsible for managing the County Cork Culture night programme. Culture night is a national celebration of the Arts and Creativity taking place on the third Friday in September.

“With a county as large as Cork this is a massive project,” said Ian McDonagh. “We focus activity in 17 main towns as well as in some other areas and on the islands. This family-friendly event is a platform for the huge number of voluntary arts organisations active in the county as well as the professional arts sector.”

RCC TY drama group at the recent preliminary round of the Briery Gap TY All-Ireland Drama Competition.

In 2023, the County Cork Culture Night programme features 252 events in 191 venues.

“We estimate an audience on the night of over 10,000,” McDonagh says. “While public support and interest in the arts has increased, it’s really important to remember that so much of artistic activity in the county is driven by the many the local voluntary arts organisations. Without that, we’d have a really difficult task.

“Looking at reports provided by the organisations we funded in 2023. We can see that a significant part of this activity was generated by some 240 mostly voluntary individuals. Over 1,500 people actually volunteered in some capacity to help make events happen. We can also see that this activity meant that some 200,000 members of the public and visitors came to or participated in an arts event or activity which the council funded in 2023.

“Our arts festivals also have an economic impact. Of the 29 small festivals we surveyed in 2023, they estimated their economic impact to be over € 5.5 m, which is an important bonus to business in towns and villages where these events take place.

“Overall, we estimate the Arts Festival sector to have an economic dividend of over €10m annually not to mention the positive impact these events have in the community and in the perception of the County as a Culturally vibrant area.”

Creative Ireland

Another national measure supporting creative engagement is Creative Ireland. Cork County Council delivers an extensive programme supporting creative engagement.

“The Creative Ireland programme is based on the individual and societal benefit that arise from engagement in creative activity. It looks at wellbeing in its broadest sense. Last year, the county Creative Ireland programme supported eighty projects with 21,000 participants. Two hundred and thirty-three professional artists and creatives were hired to support it.”

Victoria Kennefick, writer, poet. 

Cork County Council operates a number of artist-in-residence programmes Victoria Kennefick is the current Cork County Council writer-in-residence, having taken over recently from poet Matthew Geden.

Part of this role is to support writing groups.

“Most of our larger libraries have a writing group that meet regularly in the library. The writer-in-residence supports five of these writing groups directly. Over the course of a year, the writer will have a monthly meeting with these groups where they’ll work on developing their craft and look at opportunities for getting their writing out there. 

“We also have a long-standing short story publication, ‘From the Well.’ that is going into its twentieth year. Our current editor is Sasha de Buyl. She will be selecting 19 stories that will be published and launched at the West Cork Literary Festival (WCLF) in Bantry in July.

“Our previous writer-in-residence, Matthew Geden, had the difficult task of supporting literary activity during the pandemic. He developed several online writing groups which are still meeting, allowing people with an interest in writing to connect and share their work with others in a virtual space. Members of one of these groups have also started a new literary journal Swerve." 

A big project that the Arts Office is involved in at the moment is Creative Places West Cork Islands which is supporting arts development on West Cork’s seven inhabited islands.

“We made a successful pitch to the Arts Council for funding for Creative Places. That enabled us to employ a coordinator on the ground to work with our local partners and support activity on the seven islands,” said Ian.

Developments from this programme include a new arts festival on Bere Island, an Irish language arts festival on Oileán Chléire and a range of community-based arts participation projects.