ASK SOMEONE from another country to name a famous contemporary Irish writer and they’ll probably mention Seamus Heaney. Alighting on a northern poet is instructive, since it seems to indicate that most people’s perception of the island is that the arts is one of the rare arenas unaffected by the impracticalities of Partition. That a certain degree of unity prevails – separate from and superior to – the internecine rivalries and sectarian head-counting so characteristic of Irish history to date. Nothing could be further from the truth.
During the mid-1970s, Heaney and his family fled South to a quiet country cottage near the village of Ballynahinch, Co. Wicklow. By that point in his career, Heaney had already become something of an unwitting spokesperson for the besieged Catholic minority in the North and his writing from the period seems to indicate that he felt stifled by his role.
He also felt that by staying in Belfast, where he had previously earned his living as a teacher, the financial reality of having to support a young family would take precedence over the development of his craft. He knew that he couldn’t earn enough working full-time as a poet and that the vocation he’d chosen required some other form of income to keep the lights on.
Part of this discrepancy has to do with how the arts are funded. Because creativity is unproductive in the way that most of us have come to expect under capitalism, most artists rely on public funding to see them through the germination of an idea. Without it, artists would have to subsist exclusively on a series of side-hustles and full-time jobs, and the fruits of their labour – which we enjoy any time we attend an art gallery, pick up a book or go to the theatre – would be non-existent.
As things stand, artists on both sides of the border already struggle to make ends meet. A 2023 report from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland showed that, on average, an artist makes just £11,200 per year from their activities. In the Republic, that figure stands at closer to €30,000, which is still some €12,000 short of the national average when taken across other sectors of the economy.
For the avoidance of doubt, there are two main arts funding bodies on the island. One is An Chomhairle Ealaíon, the Arts Council of Ireland, based in the Republic. The other is the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, based in Belfast, which has exclusive obligation toward the funding of arts projects north of the border. Both do amazing work, especially in an increasingly cash-strapped environment where art is seen as frivolous by the central administrations in control of the purse strings.
Every year, both bodies have to wade through value-for-money committee hearings and gruelling expenditure reports to ensure that every cent of the pittance they receive has been stretched as far as it will go. Just look at how the recent debacle over the purchasing of scanning equipment by the National Gallery of Ireland was framed. You’d be forgiven for thinking that one example of extreme wastage by a single institution was somehow emblematic of a non-existent, widespread problem within the sector.
The problem isn’t the Arts Councils themselves, but how Partition has forced them to work within impossible silos. For all Leinster House’s talk about a Shared Island Initiative, there has been precious little reform – and even less opportunity – for funding cooperation between the two bodies. As it stands, an artist in the South can draw a maximum of €30,000 in individual funding whilst an artist in the North has to make do with £15,000.
If we are to continue promoting ourselves as an international hub for creativity, funding for the arts needs to be standardised across both sides of the border. If we want the Heaneys of the future to stay in Belfast, in other words, we need to give them the incentive to do so. The arts provide a vital sandbox for the development of culture in Ireland and is one of the main reasons tourists think about coming here as a holiday destination. This is in spite, not because of, how artists themselves are treated.
