Book Review: The Art of Survival: A Review of The History of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 1943-2016: Between the State and the Arts.

Abstract

Lara Cuny’s The History of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 1943–2016: Between the State and the Arts provides a timely and meticulously researched institutional and policy history of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) from its wartime origins as the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts to its precarious place in the complex and contested post-Good Friday Agreement policy environment. Based on extensive archival research, Cuny’s study shows how ACNI has navigated the challenges of pursuing an independent vision for the arts while securing its own survival in a deeply divided and politicised society. A central theme is the persistent imbalance of power between the ACNI and the state, fostering an institutional culture of caution and defensiveness.

Cuny critically examines the arm’s-length principle, revealing its limits as a safeguard against political interference and raising important questions about its long-term viability in Northern Ireland. Through detailed descriptions of regional policy and decision-making in action —from early Unionist concerns to promote a unified cultural identity to more recent interventions under Direct Rule and power-sharing—she shows how successive governments have shaped institutional direction and arts production, whether through explicit political interference or through the promotion of instrumental and managerial approaches. She situates the Northern Ireland experience within broader national and international frameworks of arts governance, exploring the origins of the arm’s-length model in wartime Britain and its application through the post-war Arts Council of Great Britain. She also helpfully paces it within the typology of state funding of the arts developed by Harry Hillman Chartrand and Claire McCaughey.  Measured in tone and rigorous in method, Cuny’s work is an indispensable resource for scholars, policymakers and arts practitioners concerned with understanding the intersection between the production of art and exercise of political power.