What Next? | Weekly meeting next Wednesday 06 July, 8.30am

Next weeks’s What Next? meeting to discuss ways in which to move the campaign forward will take place on Wednesday 6th of July at 8.30am to 10am. The meeting is open to cultural practitioners from all disciplines and supporters of the arts.

Location:
VAI
7-9 Central Hotel Chambers,
Dame Court,
Dublin 2

Wednesday 6 July, 8.30am

Discussed at meeting on 29 June:

Dáil debate on 22nd June

• motion passed
• volume of media coverage
• full visitor gallery
• interesting comments from TD’s

Getting involved

• setting up email templates for contacting TD’s
• contacting NCFA if meeting arranged with TD for support
• getting involved in local NCFA constituency groups
• getting involved with your local Strategic Policy Committee

Campaign Film

• Jenny Keogh has offered to volunteer her services to make a campaign film and is open to suggestions for personal stories of the influence and impact of culture on the lives of individuals. Contact Jenny by email on jennykeoghfilms@gmail.com

Discussed at meeting on 22 June:

Recognition of the value of culture in:
– Policy
– Status of the artist
– Art in Education

Difficulties faced by all artists in securing equitable payment and how this might be changed
– Solidarity on Payment Guidelines. Non compliance with unfair conditions (exhibitions/institutions that don’t pay artist fees)
– Acknowledgement of exhibitions/institutions that comply with Artist Payment Guidelines
– Lobby Arts Council and local authorities to adopt an evaluation system to asses organisations in receipt of funding on their compliance to Payment Guidelines

Tourist Tax / Patronage Tax
– Should Ireland implement a Tax on Bed Nights, a system used in many EU countries (France, Germany, Italy and more)
– Visual Artists Ireland shows that the introduction of a tourist tax could raise over an additional 48,000,000 Euro for the cultural sector based on CSO statistics issued for bed nights in 2015

Dáil debate on the Arts to take place on 22nd June at 4.30, expectation of high attendance of cultural practitioners in the visitor gallery

Future What Next? meetings
– see if there is interest in alternating the times of the meetings every two weeks, 8.30am one week, 6.30pm the following
– Aim to have monthly meetings in a larger public space
– part of the monthly meeting to allow a platform for representatives from different cultural backgrounds to detail issues specific to visual art/theatre/dance/music/literature in order to find common ground and clarify message

Discussed at meeting on 15 June:

Public Engagement:

How the campaign can galvanise the support of the public to communicate the value of our culture to government and connect across cultural disciplines.
Open discussion about plans for the coming weeks and months.
Political Updates:

NCFA Constituency reps have been meeting with TD’s in their regions and it is having an impact.
On Tuesday 14 June, NCFA met with Brendan Howlin, Joan Burton and Kevin Humphreys. Following this, Mr. Howlin has since secured the agreement of the Taoiseach that the draft cultural strategy (Culture 2025) will be referred to the Oireachtas Committee for debate and amendment prior to finalisation.
Fianna Fail have put forward a motion on Arts to be discussed in the Dail next Tuesday evening (21/06)