Bríd Higgins Ní Chinnéide was excited about seeing her oil paintings exhibited in the Hang Tough Gallery in Dublin at the end of March. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, that exhibition has been postponed indefinitely.

Ireland’s artists are suffering a shock to their sector, caused by the rippling effects of Covid-19. “This has really thrown some of my plans for the year,” says Ní Chinnéide.

Arts organisations will lose an estimated €2.9 million in income per month of shutdown and the economic impact on the sector to date is over €10 million, according to the Arts Council.

In addition to this, up to 12,000 events have been cancelled with 2.4 million audience engagements lost.

“Cultural institutions were the first to close. I was extremely busy with numerous group and solo exhibitions, public presentations, freelance teaching, technician jobs lined up. My year was planned,” says Fiona Kelly, a visual artist from Westmeath who gets her creative inspiration from abandoned spaces and wastelands.

Government figures show that 13,800 people in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector received a Pandemic Unemployment Payment on April 21, 2020, up from 12,600 the previous week.   

“The Arts Council has made some funding available for artists and artists are free to apply for the Pandemic Unemployment Benefit, but I think that the sector as a whole will be severely damaged by this crisis,” says Ní Chinnéide.

However, applying for the unemployment payment may do more harm than good for some artists.

“I myself will not apply for it as I don’t make €350 a week, I’m a sole trader and I’m terrified of the tax repayments in 2021,” says Kelly.

Remote working is also wreaking havoc on the livelihoods of artists. The challenge for Ní Chinnéide is finding time to devote to her art while looking after her young children.

“With schools closed and no childcare, I’m not in a position to do any work at the moment,” she says.

Kelly is battling trying to be creative while managing a chronic illness in a one-bedroom flat with her boyfriend, who is also an artist.

“I started to completely avoid social media as it made me sad, I felt, increasingly frustrated that I could not tap into my creative self. I was really upset that I had no shed, no home studio, no garden,” she says.

Kelly is also worried about the long-term effects on her working environment caused by the Covid-19 lockdown.

“My permanent studio at the Backwater has 40 key holders and has been completely locked down, as have my shared working spaces,” she says.

“Rent freezes or rent reductions have gratefully being introduced at least for April, but it is not sustainable for studios and workshops which are reliant on rent or membership fees to survive, it’s terrifying to think of the ramifications or view of the arts in Ireland in 2021,” adds Kelly.

Kelly graduated with a BA in 2008, but the moment she became an artist happened many years before she went to college, according to her parents.

“I arrived with purpose, into the kitchen one day, when I was around seven. Hands on hips I announced I was going to be an artist,” her parents told her. “I have no recollection of this,” she says.

Kelly says she is not an established artist. Regardless, she has worked as one for many years in Ireland and says that it’s a tough gig, even before Covid-19.

“There is never enough funding to go around and it is extremely competitive. Ireland has a huge pool of extremely talented artists of which I am in awe of, but this makes funding opportunities very hard to grasp – especially for someone at my stage of career,” says Kelly.

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With artists under mounting pressure due to the implications of Covid-19, the government has responded by introducing initiatives to try and aid them. However, the main scheme – a €1 million fund from the Arts Council of Ireland – introduced is only applicable to those who create visual art. 

The Arts Council Covid-19 Crisis Response Award is allocated to allow artists to create art during the lockdown and display it on an online platform for public consumption. Artists need to submit a proposal to win one of the 334 awards available, with €3,000 available to each successful applicant.

This €1 million provided by the state is not completely new money. Half (€500,000) of the funding for this award is taken out of the existing budgets of the Arts Council, which is a state body. The other half of funding comes from the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

A spokesperson for the Arts Council said that this fund has been the most subscribed initiative the organisation has ever had. The Arts Council has already received 1,000 applications.

Another initiative by the Government is for performing artists. Culture Ireland is awarding €1,000 to 100 artists/groups chosen to perform on Facebook Live as part of the Ireland Performs initiative.

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There are 23,000 art workers in Ireland and the consensus among them, even those who work in visual art and could apply for the main scheme, is disappointment, despite the number of applications.

The €1 million fund is a small measure for the country’s art community compared with what our closest neighbour has invested in its cultural sector. The Arts Council England has readied a £160 million emergency fund for the arts during Covid-19.

“Following the announcement of the arts and culture sector Covid-19 response by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht on April 3, the response from the arts and culture community was overwhelmingly one of anger, frustration and fear,” says Angela Dorgan, Chair of the volunteer lobby group National Campaign for the Arts (NCFA).

Dorgan says that the €1 million fund excludes a list of workers in Ireland’s art community such as arts administrators, those who work behind the scenes from lighting designers to studio engineers, set designers, festival crews, film crews, arts centre workers, gallery owners, producers, directors. “The list is endless”, she says. Without events, tens of thousands of Irish workers are out of a job. On a basic level, without weddings, there are no wedding singers.

Some in the artistic community hold a different view on the Government’s response.

“I am surprised at artists being so critical of €1 million being thrown out at such short notice. If you were in the hospitality trade, working in a hotel or restaurant you could only dream about something like that,” says Kilkenny-based painter Blaise Smith.

“However, it was a pity the Arts Council made the fund competitive. It means that for subjective reasons some people will get it and some people won’t. I am sure everyone would prefer if it was divided out evenly. Even if that was only €50 each,” he adds. If the fund was split amongst the 23,000 art workers in Ireland, each person would receive just over €40.

Apart from just over €500,000, the artistic sector of Ireland has not received any more support from the Government during Covid-19, according to the Arts Council spokesperson.

“The department sat down with the Arts Council to see what could be done with existing resources,” says a spokesperson for the Department for Culture, Heritage and Gaelteacht.

The arts never really recovered financially from the crash of 2008 in terms of Government funding. Before the financial crisis, the industry was receiving up to €85 million. Almost 12 years later, it still hasn’t returned to this level. 

“We are taking every measure available to us to help artists and arts organisations manage through this period, and working hard as a Government agency to ensure that the particular needs of our sector are understood and addressed in future stimulus measures,” says Arts Council Director Maureen Kennelly.

“We know that our artists and arts organisations will play a crucial role in the national recovery and will create enormous benefit for the public in the challenging times ahead,” she adds.

Taking action

The NCFA wrote to all TDs and the arts and culture spokespersons of all political parties, on Thursday, April 9. The organisation sent the letter the day after it arranged a video call with 400 attendees working across the sector. They discussed challenges the sector is facing during the lockdown.

Writing on behalf of Ireland’s artistic community, the NCFA asked for equitable investment into the sector to ensure its viability, and for politicians to engage with artists in devising initiatives during this global health crisis.

“In response to the impact of Covid-19, the arts community presents a unified voice through NCFA to ensure that the arts sector is not left behind in the huge task of recovery planning for Ireland,” the letter states.

“The value of arts and culture and the role and work of artists, arts workers and arts organisations must be recognised by Government as equal to and not less than other sectors such as tourism, hospitality and sports,” it reads.

“Our sector was one of the first to be impacted by the Covid-19 crisis and will be one of the last to return to full capacity by the time the crisis has passed,” the NCFA adds.

The group called on the Government to help those in the arts in seven ways to make sure the industry remains strong and viable during and after the pandemic.

Among the requests was for the Government to establish a stabilisation fund for arts and cultural organisations so that the sector can survive this crisis. The NCFA also requested that the Government commit to immediately investing an additional €20 million in the Arts Council for 2020.

“We simply want a situation with the Government where we are considered an important sector.”

Carlow Arts Festival Director Jo Mangan

“This should include considerable increases to project awards and bursaries that have significant impact for artists, arts workers and arts organisations, and ensure a range of other supports for artists and arts workers that respond directly to their needs,” stated the letter.

This letter was delivered to Government representatives after Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaelteacht Josepha Madigan announced support schemes at the beginning of April.

Shortly after sending the letter, the NCFA hosted a Zoom information meeting on April 17, in association with Irish Equity, SIPTU and Theatre Forum to talk through supports for artists and arts workers, accessing Covid-19 payments, dealing with social welfare and Revenue and a range of other issues arising lately.

Their next step will be a video call with the Department, which will take place next week to further discuss the letter from the NCFA.

Pledging a boycott

Others in the Ireland’s artistic community decided to take a different approach.

The Arts Blackout movement calls on artists in Ireland to abstain from applying for the Arts Council and Culture Ireland initiatives.

There is a Google Doc petition in circulation within the arts community created by those behind Arts Blackout in the last month.

The document states: “We pledge to boycott the recently announced Arts Council Covid-19 Crisis Response Award and the Culture Ireland Ireland Performs Initiative. We will not be applying to the schemes and we will not watch the outcomes of either award online. We are asking artists across the sector to take this pledge with us.”

Those who sign the document also “reject the package of schemes announced by Minister Josepha Madigan on Friday, April 3 in its entirety.” So far, almost 50 people have.

“The response was wholly inadequate to the scale of the crisis in our sector and is disconnected from the reality of artists’ living and working conditions. Placing artists under additional pressure at this time through a highly competitive awards process is at odds with the welfare ethos being shown for other sectors,” the document states.

The individual organisers have not made themselves public but have created accounts on various social media platforms.

The document includes their own requests to the Government. One is for a €10 million artist emergency package “to protect artists and to save our sector, which was already under-supported prior to the pandemic”.

They also requested at least a €10 million Covid-19 emergency fund to be made available to the Department of Culture, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht.

In addition, they ask that the Government begin setting up a universal basic income scheme through a pilot scheme for sole traders, arts workers, the underemployed, the unemployed and the community volunteering sector.

A spokesperson for the Minister of Culture, Heritage and the Gaelteacht says: “While the Minister understands that the Arts Council Covid-19 Crisis Response Award was substantially oversubscribed in advance of the closing date of April 16, she is disappointed if any artist chose to boycott the award.”

“Clearly there’s a lot of people affected who are not happy with the schemes,” adds the Government spokesperson.

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Art workers involved in organising events could be hit the hardest from the impacts of Covid-19 on their industry.

“There’s a lot of talk from the Vintners Association recently that if pubs don’t open until 2021, the industry will be decimated. This is the same for the arts,” says Carlow Arts Festival Director Jo Mangan.

Mangan goes further and explains how the situation would be worse for arts workers in event organisation, compared to other businesses. When the lockdown ends it would be impossible for them to immediately return to business as usual.

For example, those looking to stage a play need rehearsal time and cannot simply pull up the red curtain the moment the lockdown ends. If the lockdown ends before a vaccine is available in Ireland, this is also bad news for those working on artistic events.

“Who’s going to want to be in a theatre space with around 300 people before a vaccine is found?” Mangan asks rhetorically.

Some event organisers got lucky before disaster struck. One example is the music festival Other Voices, which took place in Ballina, Co Mayo at the end of February 2020. Over the course of that weekend, Ballina was teeming with visitors trying to catch a glimpse of headline act David Gray while soaking up the rest of the atmosphere. A month later, Ballina became a ghost town and the majority of businesses displayed a yellow note on their front door detailing how they were closed due to the pandemic.

Due to the uncertainty of Covid-19, and the prolonged wait for a vaccine, some of Ireland’s biggest events have already been cancelled or at risk of cancellation. Electric Picnic is one of those hanging in limbo. Last year, 57,000 revellers swarmed to Stradbally to attend the biggest festival on the Irish calendar. It is difficult to imagine this scenario repeating itself in 2020 under the current circumstances.

“No one can really envisage a future where Electric Picnic can go ahead,” says Mangan.

Mangan and her team decided to cancel their own festival in Carlow, which was due to take place at the beginning of June, because of the pandemic. She says that it will return in 2021, however.

“Festival season is how we get through the darker months.”

Stage and production manager Fiona Keller

Fiona Keller, a stage and production manager, is particularly worried about the cancellation of festivals this year due to Covid-19.

Keller was working as the festival stage manager for the production Where We Live with theatre group Thisispopbaby, who are behind the award-winning show Riot. Keller was also a stage manager for St Patrick’s Day 2020 but obviously had to stop working when the Government cancelled all St Patrick’s Day parades for the good of public health.

Keller was contracted for work before the pandemic and therefore is eligible to receive the Covid-19 Unemployment Payment scheme. This is not the case for some of her colleagues. Yet festivals are where she gets most of her revenue and the idea that all festivals will be called off for the rest of 2020 is daunting for her.

Before speaking with me, Keller sat in on an online call with others in similar jobs. Most were saying the same thing – that very few, if any, events would take place this year due to Covid-19.

“If we’re talking about festivals not happening until August 2021, that’s a really scary prospect. How do we keep going for a year?” she says.

“Festival season is how we get through the darker months,” she adds.

Keller made a separate point on how art workers are affected by the lockdown. She and many of her colleagues secure work through networking.

“We rely on mixers and corporate events and they have dried up,” she says.

“We simply want a situation with the Government where we are considered an important sector,” says Mangan. She adds that around 100,000 people in Ireland work in the arts sector either directly or indirectly, from drivers to designers.

For all of them, it is difficult to know when the curtain will go up again.