Tag Archives: art

A Letter from the Editor on the 25th Anniversary of The Journal of Music

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The inaugural issue was published in the first week of November 2000.

Published in The Journal of Music on 4 November 2025.

Dear Reader,

Some of you have been with me since the beginning. For others, this may be the first piece you have read from this publication. For the past twenty-five years, The Journal of Music has been documenting and discussing music in Ireland. One never knows the impact of this work, and it is not easy in the current media environment, but I would be concerned were it not there.

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Catherine Connolly Was There for Artists When It Mattered – Heather Humphreys Was Not

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Published in The Journal of Music on Monday 13 October 2025.

In July 2014, Heather Humphreys was appointed Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Six years after the economic crash, it remained a grim time for artists. The Arts Council budget had been cut for seven consecutive years, from €83m in 2007 to €56.7m in 2014 – a 32% drop and a complete stripping back of the arts and music ecosystem. A few months beforehand, the then Director of the Arts Council, Orlaith McBride, had said that, for artists, this period was about ‘a fundamental issue of survival’. 

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What Now for the Arts Council?

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After a failed IT project costing €6.675 million and the departure of Director Maureen Kennelly, the Arts Council faces a crisis of trust and direction. What does it mean for those who work in the sector?

It has been a difficult week for the Arts Council. With the stepping down of Maureen Kennelly on Wednesday, it has lost a Director who had a deep understanding of what it is like to work in the arts, and on Thursday, its senior staff and Chair were questioned by the Public Accounts Committee for over three hours regarding the failed IT system that has now cost €6.675 million.

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This is the Arts Council’s ‘RTÉ Moment’ and Serious Change Must Follow

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The Arts Council has written off €5.3m on ‘substandard work’ and an IT system that was ‘not fit for purpose’ while artists try to make ends meet. This has to be the beginning of real change, writes Toner Quinn. [Article irst published in the Journal of Music on 13 February 2025]

There were many surprising and infuriating aspects to the Arts Council’s announcement yesterday, in which it sketched out how it spent €6.675m and then wrote off €5.3m on a new grants management system that never worked, but few satisfactory explanations.

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Catherine Martin Swept Aside the Old Excuses for Not Supporting the Arts

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When Catherine Martin was appointed Minister for Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht in June 2020, three months into the pandemic, those working in music and the arts had become accustomed to low expectations. 

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Why We Need to Decentralise the Arts Council

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The Arts Council has secured an unprecedented €140m in the government’s 2025 budget, but where will it be spent, asks Toner Quinn.

Recently I was asked to speak at an arts policy event in Dublin. The request came at short notice and so on the day I wrote down the thoughts that occurred to me. The first was this: in 25 years of attending round-table arts policy discussions, I always seem to be going in one direction: to Dublin. 

In the past, this didn’t seem so incongruous. Dublin was somewhere everyone could get to, and the Arts Council and many of the arts and music organisations are based there. But something has shifted over the years, and it has sped up post-pandemic: artists have been getting out of the city because it is unaffordable, and yet all of the decisions that affect their lives still take place in the capital. This leads to a disconnect. 

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