Western Writers' Centre not taken for Grant-aid

Refusing to grand aid this forward-looking Galway organisation smacks of short-sightedness.

Olaf Tyaransen, 26 Apr 2006

One of the better Bond villains (I think it was Goldfinger) made the observation that when strange things start to occur, “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence - but three times is enemy action.”

Fred Johnston, the 55-year-old manager of the Western Writers’ Centre on Galway’s Nuns’ Island, has little doubt that the latter option is what’s behind the Arts Council’s bizarre refusal to grant any funding to the WWC – not just one, two or even three times, but actually eight (and seven of those, plus appeals, in a row!).

At this stage, the weary Johnston is wondering if this is a record.

“We got shot down seven times in a row, which is pretty unique,” he says. “And then they recently gave us €800 for a computer – which is brilliant when you can’t pay the rent! And then they refused us funding again just after Christmas.”

Founded by Johnston four and a half years ago, the Western Writers’ Centre is the only writers’ resource of its kind west of the Shannon.

Employing four staff through a work-scheme, the WWC has initiated, amongst other things, a variety of writers’ courses, a publishing seminar, a writers’ residency at Merlin Park Hospital, two modest winter poetry festivals, and a hugely popular ‘Poetry on the Buses’ scheme (in association with Bus Eireann).

All of this literary activity has been achieved on a shoe-string budget. “We’re scraping by at this stage,” says Johnston. “We get funding on an event-by-event basis from the likes of Poetry Ireland.

"But it’s very difficult. We’ve applied for funding again from the Arts Council, and we’ve got as much information as we possibly can from the Freedom of Information Act on why we’ve been refused past grants.

“It would seem from the few documents we have managed to see that there’s contradictory things going on in there. One assessor said that our bi-lingual events had 50% more Irish than other similar events, but we still didn’t get funding that year. It’s kind of a Catch-22. They criticise you for not programming enough stuff – yet they know that you’ve no money.”

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