Sir, – As one who toiled within the walls of the Yeats Society (Sligo), I know only too well the struggle of limited resources, of which Daniel Mulhall writes in your pages (Letters, December 15th) which voluntary cultural organisations experience.
Over the past eight years I have had the pleasure of writing two cultural histories, one on the Yeats International Summer School and another on the post-war Irish amateur drama movement. These organisations were remarkable in two ways. First, they emerged from within the An Tóstal movement of the 1950s, serving, as Canon Murphy of Buttevant commented about the amateur drama movement in the late 1950s, as an “antidote to emigration”.
Second, these voluntary cultural organisations contributed significantly to the development of the arts in Ireland. For example, at the Clare Drama Festival in 1958, Seán Ó Faoláin observed that the professional theatre could learn something from the amateur movement, such was its success.
Indeed, Patrick Hillery TD underlined the importance of the Yeats International Summer School when he made it a required part of the professional development of teachers during his tenure as minister for education. The fact that the Yeats Society, the All-Ireland, Western, North-Cork and Clare Drama Festivals (among others) are still in existence, 60 and 70 years after their founding, is a testament to the hundreds of volunteers across the decades who gave their time to continue the development of the arts in Ireland.
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Notwithstanding the need for State funding (an ongoing issue throughout the last century), this voluntary contribution is a rich legacy that is a vital part of the story of the arts in Ireland. – Yours, etc,
DR IAN KENNEDY,
Sligo.