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Culture 2025 A National Cultural Policy Framework for Ireland

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Culture 2025 A National Cultural Policy Framework

for Ireland

Steven Hadley , Patrick Collins & Maria O’Brien

To cite this article: Steven Hadley , Patrick Collins & Maria O’Brien (2020): Culture�2025 A
National Cultural Policy Framework for Ireland, Cultural Trends

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CULTURAL TRENDS
https://doi.org/10.1080/09548963.2020.1770576

REVIEW

Culture 2025 A National Cultural Policy Framework for Ireland*

a
Steven Hadley , Patrick Collinsa and Maria O’Brienb
a
NUI Galway, Galway, Ireland; bDublin City University, Dublin, Ireland

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Published in January 2020, Culture 2025 A National Cultural Policy Cultural policy; arts policy;
Framework for Ireland is the first single national cultural policy in creative industries; Ireland;
Ireland since the formation of the Irish State in 1922. We outline national policy development;
audiovisual
the development and content of the framework – including its
principles, aims and values – in the context of both Irish cultural
policy history and the “whole-of-government” policy approach. To
interrogate the coherence of the policy framework, we focus on
the creative industries in general, and the audiovisual sector, in
particular. We question whether Culture 2025’s, broad
incorporation of various sectors (language, arts, heritage, and
creative industries), can say anything of significance about the
promotion of culture in Ireland. Through the integration of pre-
existing strategies into the Irish economic system, we argue that
Culture 2025 presents itself as the only realistic approach to
culture and the arts in the form of a “cultural policy realism”.

Introduction
Culture 2025, Ireland’s new national cultural policy framework, was published by the
Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht1 (DCHG) on 10 January 2020.
Through this framework document – identified as a priority in A Programme for a Partner-
ship Government (Department of the Taoiseach, 2016) – the Irish Government (DAHRRGA,
2016, p. 2) states its aspiration to “nurture creativity, boost citizen participation, and help
more people to follow a sustainable career in the cultural sector, promote Ireland’s cultural
wealth and ensure a cultural contribution to wider social and economic goals”. The osten-
sible policy aim of Culture 2025 is to develop a more collaborative approach across all
sectors within the Department’s ambit and thereby put culture at the heart of Irish citizen’s
lives. The framework sets out values and high-level principles, which we detail below, to
inform public policy and planning in the decade ahead. Alongside other recently pro-
duced national policy documents (DCMS, 2016; Scottish Government, 2020) Culture

CONTACT Steven Hadley steven.hadley@nuigalway.ie

*The Culture 2025 policy framework was published shortly before the global outbreak of the Covid-19 virus, which – given
the immediate and hugely detrimental effects on the cultural sector – was responded to on 3 April with Arts Council’s
Covid-19 Crisis Response Award and a Culture Ireland initiative called “Ireland Performs”. Both initiatives were received
with derision by the cultural sector. We have not attempted to re-contextualise this policy review in the context of Covid-
19, partly because it is too early to do so, but also because the framework itself was not written in that context. We note,
however, that initial commentary on the response to the crisis in the national press (see Mullally, 2020) raises issues which
we address in this paper and which, no doubt, will be played out in the coming months and years. If, as Michael Dervan
(2020, p. n/a) notes, “You have to be seriously worried about what the cultural mandarins are actually thinking about”, it
seems highly likely that Culture 2025 contains some, if not all, of the answers.
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 S. HADLEY ET AL.

2025 recognises that everyone has the right to enjoy, create and participate in the culture
of their country. The document is underpinned by a commitment to increase resources for
arts and heritage, to support Irish culture globally, and to improve funding structures for
investment in services at both national and local level.
In this review we examine the assumptions underlying the document, its development
and the coherence of the policy framework that it puts forward, with a focus on the creative
industries in general, and the audiovisual sector, in particular. We question whether Culture
2025, through its broad incorporation of various sectors (language, arts, heritage and crea-
tive industries), can say anything of significance about the promotion of culture in Ireland. In
the attempt to integrate pre-existing policy and strategic documents – and their underlying
rationales – into the prevailing Irish political-economic system, we argue that Culture 2025
presents itself as the only realistic policy process within which to articulate an holistic
approach to culture and the arts in the form of a “cultural policy realism”.

Development
The engagement process for Culture 2025 began when an initial draft discussion paper was
prepared by DAHG (2015) and considered at a colloquium of cultural sector stakeholders
in the Royal Irish Academy on 25 May 2015. This was followed by a series of workshops
across Ireland, with meetings in Cavan, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Kilkenny and Dublin.
Over 600 people attended the consultation events and 217 written submissions were
received. In August 2016, then Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Heather
Humphreys TD, presented a draft version of the proposed new National Cultural Frame-
work Policy, titled Culture 2025 / Éire Ildánach (DAHRRGA, 2016) to the Joint Oireachtas
Committee on Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Following consideration of the Com-
mittee’s views, and taking account of socio-economic developments, ongoing delivery
(most specifically the Creative Ireland programme: see Creative Ireland (2019)) and devel-
opment of a series of policy documents in relevant sectors (Project Ireland 2040 (Govern-
ment of Ireland, 2019); Audiovisual Action Plan (DCHG, 2018) and the cultural elements of
Global Ireland (Government of Ireland, 2018a)), Culture 2025 A National Cultural Policy Fra-
mework to 2025 (DCHG, 2020) was finalised and approved by Government for publication
some five years on from the inaugural colloquium.2

Content
The framework policy document (published bilingually in English and Irish) is broken down
into a series of principles, aims and values as follows:
Three fundamental principles govern Culture 2025 (DCHG, 2020, p. 9):

(1) Recognising the value of culture and creativity to the individual and society
(2) Supporting creative practice and cultural participation
(3) Cherishing our cultural heritage

Through Culture 2025 (DAHRRGA, 2016, p. 3), the Government aims to:

. Enrich the lives of everyone through engagement in the cultural life of the nation
 CULTURAL TRENDS 3

. Create opportunities for increased citizen participation, especially for those currently
excluded or at risk of exclusion
. Encourage ambition, risk, innovation and excellence in the creative and cultural sectors
. Ensure that culture is seen as a core component of the work across Government
. Recognise and support the cultural contribution of the voluntary sector
. Ensure the robustness of systems which safeguard and promote Ireland’s cultural
heritage
. Support a thriving Irish language, with vibrant Gaeltacht communities and other
language networks
. Promote Ireland’s culture on the international stage
. Finance this vision with well-designed funding mechanisms

The Framework Policy is underpinned by certain Key Values (DCHG, 2020, p. 6). They are:

. The intrinsic value of culture; its richness and worth in its own right
. The value of culture and heritage to our lives and our communities
. The right of everyone to participate in the cultural life of the nation
. The importance of the Irish language, our cultural heritage, folklore, games, music and
the uniqueness of our Gaeltacht areas
. The value of cultural diversity, informed by the many traditions and social backgrounds
now in Ireland
. The value of culture as a means of fostering a more sustainable future for Ireland,
including through economic and social policy
. The value of culture in presenting Ireland to the world

The initial intention for resourcing of Culture 2025 was that it be supported through
cross-departmental government funding as appropriate to its ongoing implementation.
On 11 January 2020 (Independent, 2020) Culture Minister Josepha Madigan announced
the intention to double public funding for arts and culture from €288 m to €576mby 2025.

Cultural policy in Ireland

There has been no single national cultural policy in Ireland since the formation of the Irish
State in 1922. This is perhaps attributable to “the historical unwillingness on the part of
government to tackle cultural problems in a fundamental way” (Kelly, 1987, p. 261). Yet
a small but important number of prior, sector and/or function-specific policy documents
have influenced the direction of Irish cultural policy on the national stage: the Arts Bill
(1951) established the Arts Council with a role to promote the knowledge, appreciation
and practice of the arts; the Finance Act (1969) provided for exemption from income
tax and surtax for artists; the Arts Act (1973) included film amongst the arts for the first
time, revised the Arts Council’s role and made provision for local government in the
arts; The Place of the Arts in Irish Education (1979) which was a major influence on the
role of the arts in Irish education; Access and Opportunity: A White Paper on Cultural
Policy (1987); and The Arts Act (2003), which for the first time provided the Minister with
overall responsibility for promotion of the arts both nationally and globally, and (in
section 24) enshrined the arms-length principle in legislation.
4 S. HADLEY ET AL.

Prior analysis of the policy field revealed Irish definitions of culture as evidencing a sep-
aration between arts, culture and language and,
a general acceptance for a very narrow and elitist definition of culture. The arts, instead of
being regarded as a cultural resource, have been separated from culture and it is with this
limited area that Irish cultural policy has been concerned. (Kelly, 1984–5, p. 312)

Of course, issues around the definition of culture are neither new nor under-rehearsed
(Eliot, 1962; Williams, 1988). In the Irish policy context, it has been argued that,
the monolithic concept of the arts which has informed political and educational policy (which
are largely synonymous in any case) prevails in a society which may have admitted a certain
degree of diversity to its identity debate but which ultimately remains inherently conservative,
with all the caution, arrogance and paternalism that that entails (Pine, 1990, p. 4).

If cultural policy had only relatively recently been clearly articulated in the Irish State (Kelly,
1989), Pine (1990, p. 4) complained that Ireland still had no official cultural policy, and
bemoaned the failure of the Irish Government’s Access and Opportunity (Nealon, 1987),
introduced at the very end of the Fine Gael-Labour Coalition in early 1987, calling it a dis-
cussion document which “never reached the discussion stage, and remains an untried
blueprint”. Access and Opportunity sensibly argued that cultural policies should be
grounded in an understanding of the national socio-economic context and argued
further that culture, understood anthropologically, “relates to work, to social activities
and to ideas, all of which have undergone profound changes in Ireland” – this idea of
the relationship of culture to “work”, seen through a late capitalist, neoliberal lens, is
implicit in Culture 2025.
Cooke (2013) has pointed to the patchy representation that “culture” has been subject
to under successive Irish governments. As part of a ministerial portfolio it did not exist in
any meaningful way until the rainbow government of 1993, with the Department of Arts,
Culture and the Gaeltacht (DACG) established that year, with overall responsibility for sup-
porting culture. The accession of Ireland’s current president, Michael D. Higgins, to the role
of Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht in that government brought with it the first
set of policies that could be identified as cultural (chief among these was the reestablish-
ment of the Irish Film Board and the establishment of TG4, the Irish language television
broadcaster in 1998). The establishment of the culture ministry was part of the nego-
tiations of a programme for government put forth by the Irish Labour Party. The 1992 elec-
tion saw Labour win 33 seats in the Dáil which gave them a strong mandate in
government negotiations. It also coincided with a period of stable economic growth.
Policy documents such as the Culliton Report (Industrial Policy Review Group, 1992) and
the Innovation in Ireland report (DETE, 2008) set out to promote indigenous industrial
growth in a national economy dwarfed by the presence of large multinational corpor-
ations. While the term “creative industries” did not appear in the Irish policy lexicon
until well into the first decade of the 2000s (WDC, 2009), one outcome was the establish-
ment of the Audiovisual Federation with the aim of support the growing screen industries
in Ireland.
A previous investigation by Collins and Power (2019) has traced the impact of these
policies and the role they played in the establishment of a cluster of cultural activity in
Co. Galway over the past two decades. In short, tangible support led to meaningful
 CULTURAL TRENDS 5

opportunities where few existed previously and ultimately contributed not just to the
economic portfolio of the region but had associated knock on effects (see Gong &
Hassink, 2019). The growth of the film and TV cluster in Galway owes as much to policies
that were overtly commercial as they were cultural. Bayliss (2004) summed up the Irish
approach to cultural policy as amounting to little more than small tax breaks for artists
with a sprinkling of tourism incentives alongside. Mahon et al. (2018) argued that for any
policy to address creativity and culture as a legitimate pursuit would require the reshap-
ing of enterprise and artistic supports at the local, regional and national levels. None of
this is a small undertaking. Identifying a path towards cultural prosperity is a difficult task
facing any Minister for Culture (see Collins et al., 2018). A contemporary statement on
cultural policy in Ireland is, then, long overdue.

Culture 2025 as an exercise in policy development

If the broad purpose of a cultural policy should be “to reflect the identity of a given society and
those specific activities which give voice to society’s identity” (Quinn, 1998, p. 77) then
Culture2025 at least promises a wide-ranging approach which encompasses the Govern-
ment’s broader cultural remit, potentially affecting every aspect of Irish society and culture.
The present Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht (DAHG) has policy responsibility
for: the arts, culture, film, music, oversight of Ireland’s national cultural institutions, the built
and natural heritage, the Irish language, the Gaeltacht, the islands and related aspects of
North/South co-operation. Culture 2025’s introductory message from the Minister espouses
an avowedly anthropological definition of culture, rooted in the longstanding relationship
between Irish national identity and culture. Commendable for its emphasis and focus on
diversity-as-strength, the introductory messaging takes a broad sweep, from an indirect refer-
ence to Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“everyone has the right to
participate in the cultural and creative life of the nation”) to the identification of culture as
intrinsic to democratic society. The document is trailed by the Minister as nothing less than
“a vision for our cultural future” (p.2). Yet the question, in the Irish context, of whether a
national cultural policy was even possible, and whether such an intention might be little
more than rhetorical statement, remained a concern (Cooke & McCall, 2015) even at the
time of the announcement of Culture 2025’sgenesis in 2014.
As a policy framework, Culture 2025 seeks both to define the scope and set the direction
of travel for Government policy across the whole cultural sector. The document explicitly
sets out current progress in a broad range of categories across the sector, the aspirations
the Government has for those categories, and the Government’s commitments to achieve
those aspirations. The stated fundamental purpose of Culture 2025 is to ensure a unified
and coherent approach to cultural policy across government and to planning and pro-
vision. If, as stated, “Culture and creativity are not just the responsibility of one Govern-
ment Department” (p.3), it is important to reflect on how Culture 2025 articulates the
thesis that culture and creativity are integral to all aspects of public policy, in the “all-of-
Government” approach which Culture 2025 claims to deliver. Unsurprisingly, within the
newly articulated framework, the role of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gael-
tacht “will be pivotal” (p.3).
Many of the aims of Culture 2025 will be achieved through more detailed policies and
implementation plans in specific areas. Included in this process will be the development of
6 S. HADLEY ET AL.

a cross-sectoral plan, strategically informed by the priorities set out in the policy docu-
ment. Whilst the Government’s Creative Ireland Programme 2017–2022 will continue to
be the primary implementation framework for the promotion and strengthening of
culture and creativity throughout Ireland, the cultural policy framework of Culture 2025
embraces: Investing in Our Culture, Language and Heritage 2018-2027; Project Ireland
2040; Global Ireland 2025; Straitéis 20 Bliain don Ghaeilge 2010-2030; Heritage Ireland
2030; National Biodiversity Action Plan 2017-2021. A number of these plans either pre-
date, or we developed concurrently with, Culture 2025 raising the question of the extent
to which such a policy approach seeks either to use pre-existing policy tools to develop
a coherent overall vision, or to co-opt pre-existing measures into a framework which is
more symbolic than strategic.
Within Irish government, the policy-making process has been influenced by coalition
government and departmental re-organisations necessitating the merging of policy plat-
forms (MacCarthaigh & Boyle, 2011). The structure of the Irish administrative system is not
well suited to the complexity of cross-departmental problematics and the management of
issues that span the remits of single government departments or offices: Whelan et al.
(2004) identified a number of major cross-cutting challenges that would demand radical
adaptation of Irish public management. Whilst Whelan et al. (2004) did not identify
culture as in need of development, Culture 2025 nonetheless fits this “whole of govern-
ment” model.
An overarching term for a range of responses to the problem of increased fragmenta-
tion within the public sector, “whole of government” also encapsulates a desire to increase
integration, coordination and capacity (Ling, 2002). Whole of government policy develop-
ment and implementation differs from policy development more generally only to the
extent of the range of issues, inputs and stakeholders who need to be involved, and
the relatively more complex policy analysis needed to underpin the work (Whelan et al.,
2004). The “whole of government” approach has been applied to (i) deep-seated or
“wicked” problems, such as poverty, health or homelessness; (ii) crises and strategic chal-
lenges, such as climate change, global terrorism and disease outbreaks; (iii) as a means of
delivering integrated service delivery (Colgan et al., 2014, p. 3). Challenges to “whole of
government” policy implementation may be categorised as: theoretical, conceptual, struc-
tural, practical and cultural. A further critical challenge for such work is the difficulty of pro-
gramme evaluation and terms of both effectiveness and outcomes delivery (Colgan et al.,
2014). While the delivery of Culture 2025 ultimately rests with the Department of Culture,
Heritage and the Gaeltacht, the remit for industry lies with the Department of Business,
Enterprise and Innovation, while separate government departments are responsible for
Community Development and Tourism. Add to this the variety of actors involved in its
delivery; the Arts Council, the Design and Crafts Council, the Film Board, a raft of local
enterprise offices and Fáilte Ireland, to name but a few. What results is a disparate group-
ing with oftentimes very different goals. Coherence and clarity are vital in the develop-
ment of any framework but made more important here owing to the diversity of actors
involved.
From a UK perspective the idea that the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gael-
tacht will take the lead in ensuring that the cultural dimension of policy will be enshrined
in all areas of Government work may seem reminiscent of the fate of cultural planning in
the early 2000s: however, the Irish policy context, and the interrelationship between Irish
 CULTURAL TRENDS 7

national identity and culture, may produce a different end result. The usefulness of such an
anthropological approach to cultural identity is a question for a larger study than this work,
and must draw in issues around Irish cultural identity in terms of both post-colonialism
(Howe, 2000; Pine, 2014) – specifically the search for national authenticity in the cultural
sphere in an Ireland long marked by external rule- and ask whether Culture 2025 contains
implicit ideological intentions or is, more pragmatically, an attempt to engage with wider
policy discourses around the cultural and creative industries while still retaining hold of
the idea of the intrinsic value of culture (p.6). A deeper understanding of the intended
policy relationship between these economic concerns and non-economic values may
be revealed in the proposed cross-sectoral plan to follow.

Creative Industries
Since the emergence of creative industries discourse in the 1990s, the question as to
whether cultural policy should exhibit any overtly commercial traits is a debate that has
raged elsewhere (Hesmondhalgh & Pratt, 2005). Of concern in Ireland is the lack of pur-
chase for any form of policy that does not chime with the general policy thrust of succes-
sive Irish governments. Achieving accolades such as Kearney’s (2017) “most globalised”
country as well as numerous commendations from a variety of international media
sources highlight the effectiveness of Ireland’s pursuit of a neoliberal, low tax, corporate
agenda. The world’s biggest corporations, from technology to medical devices, have
made Ireland their home and their contributions in the form of national accounts relating
to exports and GDP have been significant (Breznitz, 2012). Support for cultural production
in the form of Section 481 (S4813) and incentives for businesses worked well in relation to,
for example, the AV industry because they chimed with the national policy disposition.
That these industries were cultural was an added bonus. Culture 2025 states its intention
to support the creative industries (broadly defined). Yet, the actual mechanisms for doing
this are scant. As with much of the other elements of the policy document, implemen-
tation of the supports is reliant on “other” plans (such as the Audiovisual Action Plan
(DCHG, 2018)). A question to be asked of Culture 2025 is what place it makes for these
kinds of policies. To briefly address some of the wider policy issues which occur in the
scope, language and framing of Culture 2025 – within both Irish and global cultural
policy – we use creative industries in general, and the audiovisual industries in particular,
as a case study to interrogate the discourse within which the policy framework is situated.
The initial draft discussion paper (DAHG, 2015) offered a definition of culture which
included both references to the creative industries and to the definition of the arts con-
tained in the Arts Act (2003). The definition of culture and creativity in Culture 2025
includes the arts, creative industries, cultural heritage and creativity (adopting for the
latter the definition used by the Creative Ireland Programme). It is telling that the more
expansive definition of creative industries in Culture 2025 (p.7) differs from the DAHG
(2015) definition in its framing of the creative industries through an explicitly evaluative
lens as those “industries and occupations which focus on creativity as a means to
deliver commercial success, export growth and resilient employment for Ireland”. This
definition aligns with broad creative industries discourse which primarily evaluates such
industries on an instrumentalised basis subject to policy rationales; that is, explicitly
from the perspective of what they can offer policymakers. These instrumentalised aims
8 S. HADLEY ET AL.

may not necessarily align with the wider needs of the industry and of society (Walmsley,
2012), nor give concern to issues of cultural value (Hadley & Gray, 2017). Of course, the
evaluation of the impact of the arts has been the subject of much discussion within the
confines of academia (Throsby, 2001; Walmsley, 2012) with a tendency to fall either into
the instrumentalist or the intrinsic camp. However, this debate has not featured within
the policy discourse around the audiovisual industries in Ireland, with an overwhelming
focus on interrogation and measurement of the (perceived) economic value of the audio-
visual industries to the detriment of consideration of wider social and cultural values.
Despite this emphasis, there is little agreement on the actual economic value of these
activities.
As we have noted, Culture 2025 is heralded as significant for being the first national cul-
tural policy framework. It is framed as a cross-government policy document. Given that the
audiovisual industries in Ireland have historically been considered as an industry rather
than as part of the arts, and tend to be evaluated by policymakers primarily on the econ-
omic benefits they generate, the explicit inclusion of references to the audiovisual indus-
tries in Culture 2025 is to be welcomed. However, it is not necessarily the case that
government departments have been historically siloed within their own particular per-
spectives. For example, the Department of Finance (2018, p. 222) carried out an analysis
of state aids in 2018, including S481. While it identified significant costs to the Exchequer
of these aids to the audiovisual industries (-€40 million and -€72.4 million in 2015 and 2016
respectively), it acknowledged that this cost does not take into account what it termed a
“cultural dividend” (ibid, p.220), that is the unquantified benefits from investment in
culture. In contrast, the report carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC, 2003), on
behalf of the Irish Film Board and Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism, explicitly
addressed only the economic benefit to the Exchequer of S481. It held that “consideration
of non-economic or cultural benefits are not within the scope of these Terms of Reference”
(PWC, 2003, p. 5). The failure of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism (as it was then
called) to consider the wider cultural value of the film industry showed an acute awareness
of the economic value of the arts as well as of its own precarious position within govern-
ment spheres of influence. Economic evaluation of the audiovisual industries is, then,
subject to contestation regarding methodologies and parameters. For example, to con-
sider the perceived “value” of S481, the most recent report from PriceWaterhouseCoopers
(PWC, 2020, p. 7) calculated an approximate positive 3.5:1 return on S481 investment in
nine case studies, a base line figure which can be contrasted with the costs identified
by the Department of Finance’s 2018 report. The chasm between costs/return on invest-
ment arises from the use of different methodologies and illustrates the difficulty of ascer-
taining the economic costs/value of state intervention in the audiovisual industries whilst
illustrating the ephemerality of modes of evaluation of culture.
A key delivery vehicle for Culture 2025, the Audiovisual Action Plan (DCHG, 2018) will, we
are told “enable Ireland to become a global hub for the production of film, TV drama and
animation” (p.5). It is significant that the focus of policy interventions on the audiovisual
industries in Ireland’s first cultural policy framework is to support a particular form of pro-
duction that is firmly situated within a globalised industrial production environment. While
the Audiovisual Action Plan does contain certain proposals that will support the industry
broadly (O’Brien, 2019), it is aimed at a narrow conceptualisation of the audiovisual
 CULTURAL TRENDS 9

industries as primarily industrial with little consideration of the role of such industries as
forming part of the cultural practice of Irish society.
Thinking about how the arts are commodified is a way of understanding how specific
industrial processes, influenced by state practices, shape our culture. It also enables under-
standing about the relationship between state and corporate institutions (Mosco, 2009).
Hardy (2014, p. 7) argues for “recognising that the goods produced by the media industries
are at once economic and cultural” and suggests a critical political economy approach
which calls for attention to “the interplay between the symbolic and economic dimensions
of the production of meaning”. Given the high production costs generally associated with
audiovisual production, it is necessarily subject to considerations of the market, both in
Ireland and globally. The underlying broadly neoliberal perspective towards cultural
policy in Ireland means that policy approaches assume an efficient marketplace. For
Hardy (2014, p. 62) “markets are not natural, independent mechanisms” but reflect the
outcome of “political and legal struggles”. We can and should critique the assumption
of neutrality of the market.
Both Culture 2025 and the Audiovisual Action Plan emphasise a reliance on the operation
of the free market, particularly through an emphasis on the role of the tax expenditure,
S481, in supporting the audiovisual industries. While S481 has a significant role in the
overall fabric of cultural production, it is mainly aimed at larger, more commercial (and
international) projects. The problem is where reliance on S481 to support the market
only benefits a limited sphere of production. There is an assumption of causality
between the provision of state supports towards the industry and the achievement of
wider cultural goals. However, the causal links between supports for the industry and
the achievement of social and cultural goals are, as yet, unexplored. Nor do they form
part of the cultural policy framework set out in Culture 2025.
Similarly, the evident focus within political and policy discourse on the economic value
of the audiovisual industries has crowded out any in-depth discourse on other forms of
value. The silence around the wider social and cultural value of the audiovisual industries
is telling. Both Culture 2025 and the Audiovisual Action Plan assume that the “solution” to
the “problems” of the audiovisual industries is to increase the level of production, and in
particular, production that originates from outside the state. While a certain level of inter-
national production is useful for the industry in many ways (for maintaining a level of pro-
duction, for experience, for training) it is problematic that it is the main focus of state
intervention. Instead, it should form one part of a comprehensive swathe of state supports
that sees the audiovisual industries as not only a cash cow or calling card for a modern
Ireland, but as a serious and respected part of our culture. Bacchi’s (2009; 2012)approach
to policy research, which interrogates policy silences, is a useful approach to Irish cultural
policy in this instance. Her aim is “to understand policy better than policymakers by
probing the unexamined assumptions and deep-seated conceptual logics within implicit
problem representations” (Bacchi, 2012, p. 22). If the core objective of the Audiovisual
Action Plan is “to provide the necessary environment for Ireland to become a global
hub” for production (p.9), we can identify multiple silences – around the wider values of
the arts and culture for society; around the precarious nature of jobs created by overreli-
ance on the globalised media industry; and issues of representation and diversity.
There are a number of potential conceptual frameworks at play in analysis of policy fra-
meworks towards culture. Globalisation, as a force, permeates the discourse on the
10 S. HADLEY ET AL.

audiovisual industries in both Culture 2025 and the Audiovisual Action Plan in multiple
ways. Ireland is framed as an open economy, as part of the global audiovisual production
industry, with emphasis on the role of S481 in attracting international production to our
shores. The audiovisual industries are upheld as representing a particular manifestation
of Ireland on the world stage. Globalisation is multidimensional as a force, but in
general it is taken as reflecting neoliberal values and the free market. While overall
Culture 2025 pays attention to the diversity of society in Ireland, the proposals towards
film and TV production overemphasise the instrumentalised nature of the audiovisual
industries. This view is echoed in the assumption that the function of the industries is
to represent Ireland on the global stage in order to tell the Irish (singular) “story”
(DCHG, 2020, p. 25). This implies that the industries, as a cultural form, are valued for
their ability to sell a particularly marketised, commodified vision of Ireland. Culture 2025
offers supports for the audiovisual sector solely in terms of the provision of “financial
and tax credit supports” (ibid), illustrating problematic silences towards the communica-
tive and representational nature of the sector.
With regards to support of the creative industries, Culture 2025 lacks any real strategic
intent. Recognition of the integration of culture and the economy is important, but not at
the cost of saying something meaningful about supporting culture itself. A related ques-
tion also needing clarity is the connection, as stated by the Minister (Madigan, 2020)
between cultural participation and the boosting of creative industries. The connection
between these two very different elements of culture is never made clear. Definitions
are explicitly used in an iterative sense, allowing a useful degree of flexibility to a depart-
ment keen to attach itself to initiatives across government. Such a broad church warrants
the assertion that culture and creativity “are integral to all aspects of Irish life” (p.3) and
more broadly that an “all-of-Government” approach (p.3) is required. From the politics
of identity, to soft power and hotel bed nights via video games and break dancing, this
articulation of “our culture” (p2) appears both all-consuming and avowedly instrumental.
The fear then is that Culture 2025, through its broad incorporation of various aspects
(language, arts, heritage and creative industries), struggles to say anything of significance
about the promotion of culture in Ireland. The definition it uses is derived from the min-
isterial portfolio of the department. This, in turn, was derived from political expediency.
The result is a document that does little to reflect on the future for Irish culture or offer
any tangible supports for its development. Culture 2025 acts as an umbrella policy, incor-
porating and relying on other policies and initiatives already underway. This approach is
not new to the government responsible for its delivery. The 2018–2027 National Develop-
ment Plan (Government of Ireland, 2018b) and its marketing of a 116 billion euro invest-
ment in Irish infrastructure was questioned for reporting of funds that had previously been
committed to projects and spun as new payments (Magee, 2018). Culture 2025 is in danger
of following a similar path. Acting as an umbrella policy for existing initiatives tends to
lessen the coherence of a policy document. For that reason, Ireland is still waiting for a
strong statement on cultural policy.

Conclusion
Consideration of cultural policy in Ireland must engage with the interplay between identity
and culture at both the intellectual and artistic level (Kelly, 1989). Within the parameters
 CULTURAL TRENDS 11

set by the definition of culture and creativity outlined in the Culture 2025 policy framework,
there can be little doubt Irish culture is, in MacNeice’s (1967) phrase, “incorrigibly plural” –
but with this plurality come problems. Kelly (1987) noted that the failure to consider the
arts within the broader context of the individual’s social environment risks a one-dimen-
sional, Marcusian cultural policy. For Marcuse (1964), the risk with such forms of techno-
logical rationality as have imposed themselves on nearly every aspect of culture and
public life, is that our identification with this hegemonic ideology of (post)modern indus-
trial society does not represent a form of “false-conscious”, but rather has succeeded in
becoming “reality”.
As a policy framework, Culture 2025 encompasses both import and export, production
and consumption, all the flows of variegated capital that might be identified by a dog-
gedly nationalistic cultural policy seen through a neoliberal econometric mindset darkly.
Economic policies may have cultural dimensions, and it is a sine qua non of Ireland’s
present cultural discourse that cultural policies have economic dimensions. By integrating
a diverse range of pre-existing policy and strategic documents into the prevailing Irish
economic system of production and consumption, Culture 2025 presents itself as the
only realistic policy process within which to articulate an holistic approach to culture
and the arts in the form of a “cultural policy realism” (see Fisher, 2009).
A dual focus on seeking to harness “the distinctive benefits of culture for both society
and the economy” (p.17) is the beating heart of Culture 2025. One is left to wonder at the
degree to which the intrinsic value of culture (the first stated “Key Value”) would be so
cherished were its instrumental (economic) effects not present. Concomitant with such
a viewpoint – as familiar to those in academia as the cultural sector – is the apparent
necessity of managerialism and metrics. Of course, the ensuing metricised reporting struc-
tures are less about efficiency and more about control, evidencing in the process a judge-
ment of value,
Art and cultural workers, taking the money, are bound by contracted deliverables not the
mutual trust of partnership. In the face of such an onslaught art and culture diligently
offers up its metrics as down-payment on its social license to operate, though it continues
to clutch an ‘intrinsic value’ like an orphan with a crumpled photo of her parents
(O’Connor, 2020. p.n/a).

What Culture 2025 perhaps wants to say – but doesn’t – is that culture and creativity can
(at best, and only to a small degree) ameliorate the socially eviscerating effects of late-
stage capitalism. All the relevant buzzwords of a cultural policy forged in the heat of a
neoliberal mindset are present and correct – the document will build “community cohe-
sion”, leading to more “resilient and sustainable communities” with improved “well-
being”- without the acknowledgment that the need for such remedies is a by-product
of policy documents in other areas of government. Indeed, the necessity for systemic
social and economic change to run alongside cultural development has been recognised
for several decades. The demand for cultural democracy is inherently political (Hadley &
Belfiore, 2018). It is for this reason that cultural policy which seeks to be apolitical, or to
wear its politics too lightly, is no longer fit for purpose. The call to define the arts in
Ireland in broader, more socially and culturally democratic terms is not new (see
Benson, 1989, 1992). The prerequisite of a socially just and democratic cultural policy,
encompassing all that is in “our culture”, is that it will function not as an instrument
12 S. HADLEY ET AL.

for, nor as a minor corrective to, economic policies but rather as a challenge to that
which degrades our civic and social sphere.

Notes
1. The term “Gaeltacht” is used to denote those areas in Ireland where the Irish language is, or
was until the recent past, the main spoken language of a substantial number of the local popu-
lation. See http://www.udaras.ie/en/an-ghaeilge-an-ghaeltacht/an-ghaeltacht/.
2. We do not offer comment in this paper on the various name changes of the relevant govern-
ment department during the gestation of Culture 2025, but for consideration of this phenom-
enon in Irish government see Slaby (2014).
3. “Section 481” is a tax credit, incentivising film and TV, animation and creative documentary
production in Ireland, administered by the Revenue Commissioners (Revenue). Projects
must either pass the Cultural Test or qualify as an official co-production under one of Irelands
Bilateral Co-Production Treaties or the European Convention on Cinematographic Co-Pro-
duction. See https://www.screenireland.ie/filming/section-481 for further detail.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Daniel Carey, NUI Galway, for reading and commenting on a draft of this
paper.

Notes on contributors
Steven Hadley is a Research Fellow in the Moore Institute at NUI Galway, Visiting Research Fellow at
the University of Leeds, Associate Lecturer at Leuphana University of Lüneburg and an Associate
Consultant with the Audience Agency. An academic, consultant and researcher working internation-
ally in arts management, cultural policy and audience engagement, Steven sits on the Steering Com-
mittee of the Cultural Research Network (USA) and the Editorial Boards of both Cultural Trends and
the European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy. He has recently published on cultural
democracy, audience development and hyperinstrumentalism. His forthcoming book, Audience
Development and Cultural Policy, will be published by Palgrave MacMillan.
Patrick Collins is an Economic Geographer working with the School of Geography & Archaeology and
the Whitaker Institute at NUI Galway. He has published extensively in the areas of global and local
development, concentrating on the global production networks and international investment pat-
terns of large technology companies. More recently, Patrick has concerned himself with the devel-
opment of the Creative Economy in Ireland and Europe. He is particularly interested in how culture
and creativity shape the places that we live in. Pat has contributed directly to a number of recent
international designations bestowed on his native Galway including European Capital of Culture
2020 and UNESCO City of Film.
Maria O’Brien has recently completed her PhD on the political economy of audiovisual industries in
the School of Communications, Dublin City University. She formerly worked as a lawyer before
moving into film and screen studies research. Her research interests lie in the intersection of law
and policy as it relates to screen media. She lectures media law in the School of Communications
at DCU and works as an Associate Lecturer in Arts Management and Cultural Policy at Queen’s Uni-
versity Belfast.

ORCID
Steven Hadley http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2240-7808
 CULTURAL TRENDS 13

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