Tag Archives: news

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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The World Can Criticise Kneecap, But They Have Started Something

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The controversy surrounding the Irish rap band has obscured deeper questions about power, conflict and resistance, but they won’t go away. (Article first published in the Journal of Music on 30 April.)

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IFI to Host Special Screening of ‘Cinegael Paradiso’ to Mark Publication of ‘Count Me Out’

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Screening to take place on Sunday 4 May at 1.30pm. Book here.

The Irish Film Institute (IFI) has announced that it will host a special screening of Cinegael Paradiso, directed by Robert Quinn, on Sunday 4 May at 1.30pm. The event marks the publication of Count Me Out: Selected Writings of Filmmaker Bob Quinn, the new collection published by Boluisce Press and edited by Toner Quinn.

Tickets for the screening are available now at www.ifi.ie.

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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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What’s Next for Irish Music?

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What does the recent trajectory of the arts in Ireland – from Arts Council funding increases to the Basic Income pilot – mean for musicians? How can we further strengthen music across Ireland? And what do these developments mean for the tradition of the Irish harp? This is an edited version of the Harp Ireland/Cruit Éireann Annual Lecture, given by Toner Quinn on 17 November 2024 at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.

It is now ten years since I submitted the Report on the Harping Tradition in Ireland to the Arts Council in October 2014. Commissioned by the Council, it was a 96-page report with 14 recommendations for the future of the instrument in Ireland.

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What Will the 2024 Election Mean for Music and the Arts?

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Now that the US election is over, we can remind ourselves that we are not citizens of that country, and that all of the airtime it has taken up in Irish media is time not spent talking about what matters on the ground in Ireland.

For those in music and the arts, there is much to discuss, particularly now that a general election has been called for 29 November.

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A Glimpse into Irish Music in the 1980s and 90s

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In 2011, a treasure trove of music and arts photos from the 1980s and 90s was rescued from a skip outside the offices of the Sunday Tribune newspaper in Dublin. Among the thousands of images were those documenting Ireland’s classical, jazz, pop, rock, theatre, dance and opera scenes. In this selection of 24 photos, we offer a glimpse into the musical life of Ireland during those decades.

The Sunday Tribune Photo Archive – An Introduction
In 2011 in Dublin city centre, Nicholas Carolan and Brian Doyle of the Irish Traditional Music Archive spotted a skip outside the offices of the Sunday Tribune. The newspaper was closing down and in the skip were thousands of photos in clearly labelled brown A4 envelopes. Carolan and Doyle and another staff member, Grace Toland, rescued the music and arts photos before the skip was taken away that day, stored the traditional music ones in the Archive, and suggested that I keep the others in case they could be used in the Journal of Music. 

The photos cover classical, jazz, pop, rock, theatre, dance and opera in Ireland in the 1980s and 90s. In recent months, I finally had a chance to look through them all and have included here a selection of 24. Together, they provide a fascinating glimpse into musical life in the 1980s and 90s in Ireland. We plan to publish more selections in the future. Should you have further information about these photographs, please email editor@journalofmusic.com.

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30 Years of Questions in One Hour: An Interview with Martin Hayes

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A recording of a public interview with fiddle player Martin Hayes, conducted by Journal of Music editor Toner Quinn at Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann 2024.

It is just over thirty years since I paused on my way out of J. McNeill’s music shop on Capel Street in Dublin to look at the tapes for sale. They were held in a tall, slender wooden case by the door with the most recent at the top. This is where I first came across Kíla’s Handel’s Fantasy as well as the re-release of Kevin Burke’s Sweeney’s Dream. On this day there was just one tape on the top shelf. The cover seemed purposefully blurred to represent motion and presented a musician standing holding the fiddle with the bow hanging from one finger. New tapes were not cheap for a student, but somehow I had precisely the right amount of money. On impulse, having never heard the name of the musician before, I bought it and jumped on the bus to Waterford.

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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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A Review of ‘What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music’ in Sound Post magazine

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What Ireland Can Teach the World about Music – and other essays
By Toner Quinn
Published by: The Journal of Music
Available from: https://journalofmusic.com/shop

Book Review
By David Agnew
Published in Sound Post magazine (published by the Musicians’ Union of Ireland), Autumn 2024. Visit https://mui.ie/

I like creative doers. People who do something different, find a way to set out their stall, for themselves as much as for everyone else to take part. Toner Quinn wanted a space for regular, thoughtful writing on music and culture in Ireland, to stimulate deeper intellectual debate, without being academic, and started it himself in 2000 through The Journal of Music. This book is a compilation of his writings in four sections on that journey. Initially in hard-copy to 2010, exclusively online from 2014, with a stark pandemic section 2020–2022, finishing with a list of impossible ideas for the future, all of which are entirely reasonable, if utopian.

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