Between the State and the Arts ˸ Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts/Arts Council of Northern Ireland (1943-2016)
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Abstract EN:
In 1939, as war had just broken out, the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) was created in Great Britain to finance the arts. Four years later, the same organisation was established in Northern Irelad because of the pressure coming from the London government. As it was not born out of regional political conviction, CEMA (NI) struggled for years to get the principle of public support for the arts accepted.The present work studies this organisation, which was renamed Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) in 1963, under various angles: political, economic, social, cultural and, of course, artistic. It will also question the arm’s length principle and the separation between the realm of politics and that of the arts that the Council was supposed to guarantee. Indeed, even though the role and the budget of CEMA were extremely limited in 1943, the Council progressively acquired numerous responsibilities. This did not go unnoticed by the unionist government, which sought to control CEMA/ACNI and how it distributed grants. With the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 1960s, the Council increasingly isolated itself in order to be recognised as neutral in the conflict. However, this also pushed it to put in place a policy that was perceived as elitist and cut out from the population. In the 1990s, the Peace Process gave ACNI a new role in the promotion of reconciliation between the communities. With the creation of the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure in 1998, the Council was further integrated into the cultural policy framework of the regional and power-sharing government. Nevertheless, culture remained a sore point and a divisive issue in Northern Ireland, with academics going as far as to say that the conflict has now become a cultural war.
Abstract FR:
En 1939, le Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) est créé en Grande-Bretagne afin de financer la production artistique. Quatre ans plus tard, sous les pressions du gouvernement de Londres, la même institution est constituée en Irlande du Nord. N’étant pas le fruit d’une volonté politique locale, le CEMA (NI) mettra de longues années à faire accepter le principe d’un soutien public aux arts. Ce travail étudie cette institution, renommée Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) en 1963, dans toutes ses dimensions : politique, économique, sociale, identitaire, culturelle et, bien sûr, artistique. En effet, si les fonctions et le budget du CEMA sont extrêmement restreints en 1943, le Conseil acquiert de nombreuses responsabilités et s’affirme progressivement, même si sa ligne directrice reste très influencée, voire contrôlée, par le gouvernement unioniste. A partir des année 1970, le conflit opposant républicains et loyalistes l’oblige néanmoins à se replier sur lui-même et à se murer dans une politique souvent critiquée comme élitiste, afin de maintenir une neutralité qu’il juge irréprochable. Par la suite, le processus de paix lui confère un réel rôle en termes de promotion de la réconciliation entre les communautés. La création d’un ministère de la Culture en 1998 augmente son intégration dans une politique culturelle menée par un gouvernement local de coalition. La culture, en tant que révélatrice des identités régionales, demeure cependant un point controversé et clivant, certains universitaires allant jusqu’à dire qu’il s’agit maintenant d’une guerre non plus armée, mais culturelle.