My Work as an Ulster-Scot's artist.

 Overview of my work in Northern Ireland 1997 to 2014.  

Willie Drennan

[This is for the benefit of those who have expressed an interest in how much money I have sucked out of the government’s Ulster-Scots pot].

First of all, I am an Ulster Scot. Everything about me is Ulster Scots: my family background, the area I grew up in, my natural form of speech, the music, songs, poetry and stories that I grew up with. As a teenager in the late 1960’s I was writing songs and poems in Ulster Scots.

 I left Northern Ireland in 1976 to travel and work in different countries before settling in Canada for fourteen years. While in Canada in the early 1990’s I helped form the Ulster Scottish Society of Canada. When I returned to Northern Ireland in 1997 I immediately found work as a folk musician/ storyteller who primarily worked within the Ulster Scots genre.

I applied to the Arts Council for funding in 1997 to develop, workshop and promote an Ulster Scots stage show in relation to the 1798 Rebellion in Mid Antrim. I receive a small grant. We toured the show successfully, both in Northern Ireland and in the Republic. This was before the government’s Ulster Scots Agency was invented and long before it was operational.

 Since that I have continued to be a self-employed artist and have not directly applied for personal funding. I have however been hired to participate in concerts, projects, and festivals that would have received some government assistance.  The majority of my Ulster Scots work, up until 2009 would have been through the Ulster Scots Folk Orchestra Association, which I fronted and coordinated  for much of that time-period . The vast majority of the work of the Ulster Scots Folk Orchestra did not receive direct funding. We performed just over 800 concerts: the majority of which were paid for via  ticket sales. We produced 12 CD recordings and 2 DVD’S which were simply financed through sales. We did not receive public funding to produce the recordings as we simply did not need any. 

The only direct funding that we applied for, and actually the main reason for the formation of the association, was to develop a Youth Programme. We did not teach beginners but we engaged a large number of already trained young musicians to perform our material and style on stage. We also gave workshops and performances in schools. We received some funding from the Arts Council and the Ulster Scots Agency towards this. I personally was heavily involved in this project but, for the record, due to a strange set of circumstances resulting from dysfunctional government practice, I possibly ended up with no government money at all for the extensive work that I carried out.

It is necessary to point out that while I was involved in the funding application process with the Ulster Scots Folk Orchestra this is not money that I required for myself as I was already well-known and regularly engaged as an Ulster Scot performer. And, as a matter of fact I would go as far as to state that the small amounts of funding that the orchestra did receive for the Youth Project was a curse.

Outside the orchestra the only other funding that I received, through another cultural association, was towards my second book on Ulster Scots. This small grant was spent on costs related to research, design and marketing. The book was printed and published without the aid of government funding.

 Someone also queried the TV shows that I presented. I was hired by an independent media company and I have to assume they received their payment from BBC. All in all, it is difficult for me to say exactly how much of my work since 1997 has been paid for indirectly from public funding as I often would not have been aware if the hirers received any government money or not. I would guess  that it would have been less than 50%.

 

There may have been other connections to public funding that I have overlooked. If that is the case it is because they would have been so trivial that I have no recollection of it.

 

 It is essential for government to support the arts to some extent and I have been pushing for a change in bureaucratic system to allow for more private sector initiatives and less dependency on public funds. The present massive amounts of funding currently available for arts and culture, most of which gets absorbed in top-end bureaucracy, is not sustainable.  Younger people involved in the arts would do well to consider this. Those already wrapped up in the system, understandably, do not want to address this as their livelihood has become dependent upon that system.

In the interim, until the scale of squandering of public arts money is exposed: until a more sensible strategy for promoting the arts is put in place; I will continue to take whatever work comes my way, whether it is indirectly subsidised by government or not.   That is the reality of the present system in Northern Ireland and I have bills that need to be paid.  I trust this approach will be deemed reasonable by those who have expressed interest in how I manage my livelihood. Also see my blog on Creative Industries.

 I do make one exception: I refuse to do gigs which I get  indirectly paid for via the Ulster Scots Agency.   I believe that outfit should be shut down as it is controlled politically from the very top and it is represents massive squandering of taxpayers money.