Secret life of Cork

Living in the city centre, I thought I knew everything that was going on in Cork. On my doorstep, I have the English Market, Opera Lane, Patrick’s Street, historic Shandon, the Docklands, the genteel business district of the South Mall, all waiting to be discovered. And I have explored all of them numerous times.
But, like a lot of people, I don’t go outside my comfort zone too often – mostly, I go out to the same places, buy my groceries in the same shops and take the same shortcuts.
This is the first week in what’s known as ‘the silly season’. We’ve been lucky this year - it usually starts in July - but the economic conditions have meant there’s plenty of news even if most of it is bad. It’s the time of year when journalists quake at the thought of filling 96 pages – no council meetings, no Dáil, very little crime and no courts – and everyone else is on their holidays. Nobody answers the phone and nobody calls you back, and that dog that plays football in the neighbourhood is suddenly front page material.
With the Opera House closed, the majority of summer festivals over and done with, and schoolchildren starting to count down to the dreaded 1 September, it would be fair to assume that Cork has shut down for its summer holidays.
A colleague remarked to me during the week that even the streets seem to be dozing in these warm, heavy evenings. Pockets of buzz illuminate the hotspots, but by and large, Cork is quiet.
But it’s those pockets you have to watch out for. Where you see four or five, or ten people huddled outside a building, smoking and chatting, it’s worth finding out what’s going on.
This week, I’ve been having my own private Arts Week.
On Monday night, I went to see Cork playwright Conal Creedon’s two one-act plays, When I Was God & After Luke, at the Cork Arts Theatre.
Right across the river from the sleeping Goliath that is the Cork Opera House, the Cork Arts Theatre is like a brave, busy David, merrily toiling away with a packed schedule of lunchtime theatre (€10 – bargain) and short, tightly produced shows with Cork actors and production.
Creedon’s plays were marvellous – they capture Cork beautifully and with human themes that have appealed universally, as far away as Shanghai and New York. Whatever about the Lonely Planet, I bet there are a few Chinese theatre fans who are counting down the days until their trips to Cork.
On Tuesday, it was the turn of the Everyman, the grand old lady of Cork theatres, where the Cork premiere of Druid’s production of Penelope, written by Enda Walsh, was showing. The theatre was sold out, and the buzz – all ages, shapes and sizes of people – was impressive.
Despite some rather intimidating reviews in national papers, most of the crowd seemed to enjoy what is essentially an expose of human nature and its brutality and passion, wearing the clothes of a demented comedy. Well worth a watch, with an open mind.
Today, I hope to take in some art – but I’m not sure where to go. The Crawford Museum? The Cork Vision Centre? The Glucksman? Or maybe the exhibition of the adult education art classes at Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa, the invite to which popped into my inbox as I was writing this.
My point is this: The city may appear to be sleeping. But there are still plenty of people here who are dreaming, and the dreams are open to all of us. Step outside your comfort zone, and dare to dream.

Arts attack

Over the past number of years, we in Cork have learned to expect the very best. A city of jazz, film and midsummer madness, City of Culture in 2005, and now one of the world’s Top Ten Cities to visit, Cork has never had it so good in many ways. But we learned yesterday that Ireland as a whole must get used to a lower standard of living. According to the OECD, a lower standard of living will become the norm over time due to the huge imbalance in the public finances. Even those who are still in work are finding cutbacks affecting them in small ways – grumpy staff in shops (pay cuts), nobody answering the phone in call centres (lay offs) and longer queues almost everywhere.
On Tuesday night I went to see the classic Ibsen play ‘A Doll’s House’, directed by Alan Stanford (that’s George from Glenroe to most of us) at the Everyman Palace. The play is a literary classic and features on the Leaving Certificate syllabus. The Everyman was, I would estimate, about one-quarter full. The play was fantastic. Beautifully produced and directed, fantastic actors and a thought-provoking storyline. But so few people were there to see it that I wondered how the theatre and company could afford to tour.
We are accustomed now to hearing that practically everything (farming, the public sector, the Catholic Church, schools, newspapers, the health service etc) is ‘in crisis’. And the arts are no different. With cutbacks threatening practically everything, supposedly unprofitable lines of spending like the arts – like ‘A Doll’s House’ - are first in line for the chop.
A new group, the National Campaign for the Arts, is gathering momentum in its campaign to retain funding for key parts of cultural infrastructure such as the Irish Film Institute, which supports about 6,000 film industry jobs, and Culture Ireland, which promotes Irish drama, music, art and writing abroad.
The group held a meeting in Cork recently which was strongly attended, and artists and arts workers across all regions have come out to voice their concerns. While much of their concern is of course for their own employment prospects, part of what understanding art is about is seeing the bigger picture.
The bigger picture is that, while you can’t do a straightforward cost-benefit analysis of our investment in the arts, it sows economic seeds from which the country reaps enormous dividends.
Ireland is known internationally for its writers, theatre, music, poetry and even film, and our reputation abroad as a cultural Mecca is well established. Cork’s stint as European City of Culture 2005 contributed massively to the city’s arts scene, not least by giving a confidence boost, which was noted in the Lonely Planet guide.
Being able to see a literary classic done by a top notch company, at a reasonable cost and just five minutes’ walk from home is just one of the reasons I love living in Cork. Dublin does not offer the same proximity, and none of the other regional cities offer such variety.
And how was I able to do it? Because of the support given by the Arts Council to venues like the Everyman, and to artists like those in Second Age Theatre Company.
Protecting and nurturing our domestic arts scene is the only way that the money-spinning international artists of the future can learn their craft. The arts provide the only international platform on which Ireland is genuinely respected and influential. They bring a huge volume of high-spending tourists here (€5 billion annually), although our cultural exports are more difficult to quantify, with Irish artists having won Grammys, Tonys, Oscars, and the Man Booker.
As the only Irish city in the Top Ten, and the only Irish City of Culture, Cork has an obligation to support what has made it great.
So get online, to www.ncfa.ie, write to your politicians, and make sure that the near-bankruptcy of the public purse does not leave us culturally bankrupt as well.