Roisín McDonough has now been a year and a half in one of Northern Ireland's trickier posts: she is Chief Executive of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. She has been talking with artist Miriam de Burca, in the company of the the Council's Public Affairs Officer, Damian Smith.

Miriam de Burca: Much focus will be placed over the coming period on the 'think-BIG' bid for Belfast as City of Culture in 2008. Will this affect the individual artist and smaller arts organisations?

Roisín McDonough: Well I hope it will, and I hope it will do so positively. For the first time there is a serious and concerted effort to bring what is a diverse set of sectors under the umbrella of a city approach with the aim of winning the designation of City of Culture in Europe. Imagine Belfast has been engaged in a fairly extensive consultation process, from community level through to the arts and cultural organisations, private sector, government bodies and so on, in an effort to galvanise and bring people together to rethink what it is that arts and culture can contribute to the quality of life in the city. It is quite a difficult task because there are a lot of differences and potential divisions between the arts and cultural sector, but I think by asking people to reflect on what it is they think they can contribute to this overarching goal, that's something which is positive.

They have adopted the inclusive approach, talking to individual artists as well as the smaller arts organisations, and some of the more notable cultural and arts organisations. I think fundamentally it involves a shift in mindset in terms of a 'can do' approach, thinking positively, and to re-interrogate what it means to be in the arts and cultural sphere. Getting people to ask themselves what are the positive aspects of that, what does it make by way of contribution to the overall quality of life in the city? I think it's important that we re-examine those kinds of things.

Damian Smith: They're launching the Cooking Pot in the Corn Market this morning, Gavin Weston's installation. Literally, a giant cooking pot.

RMcD: It's an installation that by the very name - as in "what's cooking?" - is designed to attract the interest, excitement, and to comment upon the bid and draw attention to that and people's possible contribution. Another example would be the Harland & Wolff shipyard cranes, which were used as a backdrop onto which the ideas and aspirations of the citizens of Belfast were projected, of what they wanted to see by the year of 2008. It was visually imaginative and captured popular interest and certainly got a great deal of people talking about Imagine Belfast as the Capital of Culture.

DS: It was Terry Loane's idea. People ended up looking at a piece of contemporary art and didn't know it.

MdeB: Regarding the Northern Irish arts overall, how integral do you consider smaller, more peripheral art groups to be?

RMcD: I wouldn't describe them as 'peripheral'. Those groups are an integral part of the arts infrastructure and sector. It's precisely amongst those smaller, less noticed organisations, with less media attention on them, that the life blood of the arts flows in many respects, and they are as much part of the essential landscape of the arts as some of the bigger institutions are. So I wouldn't regard them in any way as 'peripheral'.

MdeB: I wouldn't consider 'peripheral' to be something negative. I would say that it's quite valuable to have things happening on the edge, because their criticism feeds into and feeds from what goes on at the centre of the arts market.

RMcD: Yes, some arts and arts organisations would operate on the edge, on the outer margin, and they perform a very critical and often challenging function towards the myths about the nature of the arts. That's very important, and without them some of the preconceptions that we have would remain the ruling orthodoxy. So, in that sense, I regard them as absolutely essential in providing that critical challenge and should be supported.

MdeB: One aim since your appointment as Chief Executive was to be able to offer a three-year funding package to eligible applicants. Are we any closer to its fruition?

RMcD: In terms of the Arts Council being able to offer a three-year funding package to clients that were able to work within a three-year planning cycle, the fact that we only get our budget in yearly allocations from the Department is clearly a mitigating factor against us being able to offer that opportunity to arts organisations. In that respect we're somewhat similar victims - of not being able to plan on a three-year basis in relation to the funding aspect of our planning cycle. We've been talking to our parent body, the Department of Culture and Arts and Leisure (DCAL), trying to make the case, but, again, it's reliant upon the Executive itself being able to plan for three years. So it goes back to a much deeper problem. So, no, regrettably, we are not any closer to realising the aim.

It wouldn't necessarily be suited to every client. Some smaller organisations may not have the capacity to plan in a three-year cycle. Funding can go both up and down, and the reality of public-sector funding is that it can go down as well as up. It's an unknown quantum over a three-year period. It would suit some of the larger organisations like orchestras whose seasons tend to get planned well in advance, but for some of the smaller organisation which are perhaps more spontaneous, it really wouldn't suit them.

MdeB: With the renewal of the Cathedral Quarter - Belfast's 'Temple Bar' - the re-housing of its arts organisations will introduce a considerable rise in rent and running costs. Does the Arts Council plan to lobby for additional funding in order to help subsidise such increases?

RMcD: We do see ourselves as having a lobbying and advocacy role in terms of the arts sector and one of the positive things is that we now have a parent department, DCAL, and Minister, Michael McGimpsey, who also sees himself as a champion and advocate for the arts. That's evident in the Capital of Culture bid. Having said that, that's a bit of a bland kind of statement. We're very conscious at present that arts organisations often don't have enough to survive or to meet their requirements. Generally speaking, over the years the arts sector hasn't had a substantial increase in resources. It has been the Cinderella of government funding. So we're aware that arts organisations are struggling even at present to meet some of their overall costs. Clearly anything that would increase the burden that they currently have, without any additional support to make them self-sufficient or at least be able to withstand some of those costs, would be a source of concern. Whether that's in the Cathedral Quarter or elsewhere in Northern Ireland. So, it's something we are keen to keep our eye on. In our advocacy role in trying to get increased resources for the arts, where there is evidence of these circumstances, we would use it to back up our case that more funding is required.

MdeB: In order to complete Arts Council and Lottery forms, arts organisations face a daunting, bureaucratic process. The specialised language required of them can prove to be alienating and discouraging. How is this being remedied effectively?

RMcD: Since I've been in post, we have been in the course of the last year undergoing a fairly thorough review of that aspect of our work. We consulted with organisations, and we tried to test any new forms on some of our arts organisations to get feedback on what it is they think that may be improved. We are reviewing our processes in order to streamline them and make them as good as they can be for those who are applying, and they then have the responsibility of showing how they choose to spend that money. Frankly, I would say that in order to get money from any funder, people have got to fill in application forms and clearly establish what it is they want, why, how much it's going to cost, what they expect to achieve, and how they propose to account for that. They are the fundamental principals of all public funding. Ours are no more onerous than anybody else's. All funders and forms do use a particular language. Clearly the forms are framed with terms that in a manner bespeak that language. But I don't necessarily agree that it is a daunting and bureaucratic process. Access to our funds speaks for itself in that there is a wide range of organisations that receive the exchequer funds as well as money from the Lottery side of the house.

DS: There aren't buzzwords or code words. Like, if you say 'cultural diversity' or 'community' four times you'll get the money. I know that there is a perception that somehow there are codes or types of language that you can couch things in. But it doesn't work.

MdeB: So, if you had to choose, who would have more chance of receiving an award: a talented artist with an inadequately completed form, or a mediocre artist with a well-presented application?

RMcD: There is a stereotype of the artist who is very talented and very focused on the production of their work but is utterly inept at filling in a form, and I think that is a caricature. We don't find from our artists any particular difficulty with form-filling. We would argue that the best get the awards and bursaries they deserve. The best way we can ensure that artists are supported through our networking is via the work that our officers do by meeting artists, going to meet them where they create and produce their work, and talking to them about what their particular needs are. Over the years we have a fairly healthy track record in that regard. We commissioned a report on the Creative Imperative, which looked at the needs and issues facing the artist. We all know that the single biggest characteristic of the artist is their poverty, and whilst our limited awards don't get them out of poverty, they can nonetheless help confer the recognition artists often don't get in our society.

MdeB: The Lottery and ACNI funding combined, what was the overall percentage given to the individual artist this year? Will this increase?

RMcD: First of all, with respect to the individual artist, the resources have increased considerably. They used to be round about £188,000 and we're now giving out almost half a million in direct awards and bursaries to individual artists, so that has significantly increased in the last 15 months or so. In terms of our Lottery and other revenue funds given to organisations, we would say that much of that goes to supporting artists anyway. For instance, grants we would give out to independent, professional and community theatre companies would go to playwrights to write, actors to perform, but also to the stage managers, the lighting technicians, the set designers who are all artists in their own right. If, for instance, you think about the Ulster Orchestra, who is our largest single client, much of that funding will go to the individual musicians who play in the orchestra.

What I'm saying is that we would see most of our funding as going directly to artists involved in creative production right across the visual arts, multimedia, the performing arts and so on. Increasingly artists are working in a wide variety of different contexts, not necessarily just an organisational context. We have a directory of artists who work in schools for instance. They would be the direct beneficiaries of the funding which is routed through the schools. We have artists working in the community who would also work on public art commissions. The commissioning process engages with an artist to make a particular piece of work, so they would be a direct beneficiary. It's very hard to answer your question, to desegregate precisely the particular amount of money other than what is specifically dedicated directly for artists making applications themselves. But overall, we would argue that most of it, the overwhelming bulk, gets through to the artist directly.

MdeB: Cynicism towards the so-called 'high' arts is prevalent amongst those that consider themselves disenfranchised or excluded from the art world. What hopes do you have for the improvement of attitudes on both sides and where do you think are the areas most in need of change?

RMcD: This is a fairly old polarity, and I think a false dichotomy. I hope it is evidenced in our new five-year strategy and funding programmes that we don't see 'high' arts as something opposed to some other kind of arts, and our funding pattern reflects the great range of different contexts in which art takes place. Because it takes place in such a variety of contexts there is a huge and different audience. Increasingly, you are finding that people who are participating in the arts go to a variety of different arts experiences and events. So I do think there is a continuum in arts practice and experience, both in terms of the people who create the art and indeed the audience and participants. As regards accessing the arts, it is undoubtedly the case that there are people in certain places who don't have the fullest access to the arts as we would like them to have. We are trying to enact an increasingly developmental role with respect to that issue, working with communities and groups in order to ensure that their access to the arts is a matter of choice rather than some coming up against barriers by dint of class, age, disability, ethnic background, or whatever category that may be. That is an important focus and objective of this Arts Council, and I hope our funding programmes reflect the seriousness with which we want to address some of those issues.

The old distinction of 'high' arts as opposed to some other form of arts no longer sustains in that clichéd or stereotypical manner. The Ulster Orchestra, for example, is working with local communities, putting on events with local communities. Many of our large arts organisations are also developing outreach and community based-programmes, conscious of their obligation of expanding their audience. Which makes good sense when everybody is concerned about audiences for the arts, not simply retaining existing audiences, but building and deepening the relationships with current audiences and expanding the range of people who avail of the events.

It is a matter of perception as to what people regard as being art or don't regard as being art. What I would often regard as being 'art', some wouldn't, and if they don't see it in those terms they wouldn't necessarily appreciate that what in fact they were engaging in is part of the huge spectrum of arts activities, simply because it has not been labelled as such.

DS: And then of course there is 'real' art after you've finished all that talk. There is 'real' art which takes place in galleries. It is done by commission and gets reviewed, and everything else is ignored. The old idea that a big space with white walls, squares and oblongs is the only way art can be art is not a definition that's shared anywhere else except in galleries.

RMcD: Which contributes to the enduring perceptions that some things are art and some things are not. But many of the arts organisations, including the Ormeau Baths Gallery, are making efforts to extend their social reach, to demystify and break down some of the barriers and perceptions about, especially, contemporary art. Classical music is another area that people have certain perceptions about. That it's for middle-aged, middle-class, middlebrow, middle-of-the-road type audiences. But organisations are endeavouring to break down some of those barriers and perceptions. We are discussing with the Department of Education, the Educational Library Boards and Young at Art, about trying to afford every pre-school child an opportunity to make and create music. So that they would be able to sight-read quite readily by the age of six or seven. To integrate music into the curriculum in a very creative manner, prevents the sort of division which is then endlessly reproduced throughout the entire educational system as people go through it, where we end up with musical élite on one side and people who tune into popular music on the other, and that chasm between.

DS: Sight-reading holds the key. Once a child can sight-read every type of music opens up to them. It is a very simple educational tool. We've already made a shift with regard to how we define artistic practice, where it takes place, what deserves to be funded, and who's involved in it.

MdeB: The Crescent Arts Centre has been a well-established arts venue for years, serving Belfast to a standard that has earned it respect and high regard from the general public and the arts sector. This year the Arts Council rejected its funding application. Many feel its potential loss will have a negative effect on the state of the arts of Northern Ireland. Can you explain why this decision was made?

RMcD: What we turned down was a capital-funding application. We still continue to put in around £100,000 of revenue and will continue to be a significant funder of the Crescent in the current position and in the near future. We don't feel the Crescent is on the verge of closure and would be very concerned if that were the case. As you rightly say, it is a well-established arts centre, part of the network of provision and of the infrastructure in the city, delivering to a range of people, with a wide programme of activity. The manner in which it does it is something which is indeed valued by this Arts Council. But the Crescent has problems with respect to the building that it is housed in. It is only 50% occupied.

With the resources which we have accumulated over a number of years through a moratorium on our Lottery capital, our strategic priority is a new city-centre arts centre, located in the Cathedral Quarter in Belfast. We see our money going there to support its development. We have over the years looked at the issue of arts-centre provision in the city and many reports have been commissioned. Generally, they agree on the need for a city-centre venue, particularly in that part of the town that has been so neglected over the years. Our council felt that its priority within the city was both with the Grand Opera House and with the creative 'Hub', as it's now been termed. We also said to the Crescent that we will work with them and assist them with respect to the problems they face but we can make no promises. With all funders there are finite resources and we have to establish priorities.

MdeB: You could say art and business are polar ideals, and within an institution like an Arts Council where the creative process of art-making must be quantified in monetary terms, subjective interpretation can tend to be contradictory. How does the ACNI strive to avoid discrepancies in its decision-making process?

RMcD: There are a number of dimensions to our decision-making process. For some considerable time we had been very actively consulting with the sector. That's very important because decisions about funds are not taken in the abstract but are made in light of what the priorities and overall strategy is. Secondly, we have now a system of external advisers, which we publicly advertised, endeavouring to show that we are serious about opening up the Arts Council and the way in which it conducts its business. So we advertised and asked people not simply who you would consider to be 'mainstream' arts organisations or artists, but people who had a broad range of interests and might have touched on the arts, including people drawn from the business sector and local bodies like community and voluntary organisations. We now have over 130 advisers on a list that we can use to help us think through particular policies, to give advice on matters we are focused on. Not just policies, but their out-workings and expressions, and how people can access what it is we're trying to do in those arenas. On top of that we have a council which is appointed under the public appointment system by the Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure. Before we get to council we have a professional body of advisers who assess applications very rigorously. The summaries of these are brought to council, who further interrogate any recommendations and take decisions accordingly. The council is the ultimate arbiter of the decisions that are taken. I think what I'm trying to say is there is quite a complex picture of influence, guidance, and advice, which affects the decision-making process in a way that is far more extensive than may be perceived to be the case.

You mention art and business being polar ideals and how we quantify the money that we give and the difficulties with that. We don't quantify art in monetary terms that we assign to it, it's the other way around. We quantify our money in artistic terms: what is the artistic value that our money delivers?

MdeB: In the South of Ireland, more and more artists and art groups are choosing to leave the capital cities, partly for economic reasons, but also because of a growing trend of decentralisation. Do you predict the development of a similar kind of diaspora in Northern Ireland?

RMcD: There is a popular misconception, which is that most of our artists live in the cities, in this instance Belfast and Derry. That's not the case. To substantiate this, there is a study on the creative industries done by Paul Jeff Cutt of Queen's University. It is the first time such a mapping exercise has been done and whilst it is much broader than the arts and cultural sector as we would understand it, nonetheless his research is revealing that most of those involved in the creative industries live outside the cities. In the towns, villages and the countryside right across Northern Ireland. We have a very strong network of venues and local arts centres. Virtually every town has an arts centre as a creative focal point for that area. Artists like anybody else will live where they think the conditions are best for them and often that's not in cities at all.

DS: I think native artists would resist any moves by artists to collect themselves anywhere outside. The idea of reconfiguring and clustering, I imagine would be problematic.

RMcD: I don't know that we're aware of any particular trend in that regard. I think that there is still capacity for development and growth in the context of new provision in a defined cultural quarter in a way that probably is not the same in Dublin and possibly Cork where saturation levels may have occurred. We have a very small society here. We are not as open to the influences of outsiders being readily absorbed into the towns. Artists in market towns and villages are already involved in a network, coming together, exhibiting or performing in a local venue. There are new venues growing with projects that are indigenous, organic growths, as opposed to people coming in from the outside.

DS: Culturally it's different. You wouldn't have the kind of alienation like you would have had in the South between Dublin and outside of it. With everything being centred in the capital to such an extent, you would have had a perception of cultural and artistic impoverishment elsewhere, and people would have had to go to Dublin in order to make a name or to practise what they were doing. Here you have 26 local governments who, with only one exception, all have arts officers with budgets for venues for visual arts which we help fund. They are very jealous of their budgets and the arts communities that they support in their areas.

RMcD: We are a lot smaller, and the ties that bind us are probably a lot stronger because we are small. So we don't tend to have that division.

DS: Also, there are more of us per head, in terms of artistic practise. It's not odd to find an arts page in a local newspaper, on artistic practice, choirs, crafts, amateur dramatics. Since the Lottery has come in it has started to enhance the infrastructure throughout Northern Ireland. So you have Cookstown with a fully equipped theatre, one in Armagh, Larne, Banbridge, Portstewart, Derry, ones being built in Omagh and Ballymena, and just across the border you have An Griannán, which is another fully equipped professional theatre. With those go a popular perception in their own areas, with local coverage. The North is a well-served, flourishing area. Lisburn for instance is a town of very different character but it's only ten miles from Belfast. And that's the pattern of population we have here, thank God!

Miriam de Burca is an artist, working and living in Belfast.