~t:.lilt l=- '~li - Comhaltas Archive

TREOIR'We have to be wise as the childrenof this generation and yet remainchildren of light'world changing with the rapidity ofthe electronic message, are only to befound in those elements of culturewhich have the character of durabilityand universal sense.The Irish cultural tradition hasprovided for Irish people throughouttheir history, at one and the sametime, a reliable spiritual resource anda wellspring of meaning. Ourancestors drew strength andendurance from a cultural deposit laiddown over the centuries and formingthe mainstay and lodestone of theiridentity as a distinctive people. Thattradition has withstood the assault ofthe colonizer, attempting to erasethose specific properties of a people'shistory and culture which informtheir cohesiveness as a group on theone hand, and the protagonists of socalledhigh culture on the other,whose criteria for the inclusion ofanything under the heading of artwere constructed out of theexperience of a wealthy and powerfulminority. The best that has beenthought and said does not resideexcluSively on one dimension ofartistic expression.Now, our Irish traditions are faced bytheir greatest challenge to date - theinfluences deriving from a mass cultureof consumerism and its agents in themedia and advertiSing industries. Thetraditional arts of Irish culture are notabstract, static entities, objective andfreestanding, untouched by the livedreality of their practitioners or othermanifestations of cultural expression.The traditional arts are expressive ofa living culture, a tradition, which ismoving and dynamiC, forever subjectto review and renewal, interpretationand stylistic addition. These emergefrom the contemporary experience ofthe Irish people, wherever they are tobe found in the world. Without losingcontinuity with what has gone before,the tradition gathers into itself thepresent and its effects, is shaped andre-shaped, moulded and designed againthrough the historical experience ofpeople living today. The traditioncannot but be affected bycontemporary experience, that is whya great institution like Comhaltas hasto be more than simply a guardian ofthe cultural deposit received from thepast, it must renew itself in re-engagingand dynamically so, with the wider,broader cultural matrix which in themodern world is now an interactiveand mutli-faceted dimension.If we believe that our identity as Irishpeople is mediated through ourcultural lives, then we have to takeaccount of the living context withinwhich that experience is undergone.It is not what it was 50 years agowhen Comhaltas was founded. That iswhy we have to adapt to thechallenges of the new social,economic, political and culturalworlds with which we all live andhave our being. That will meanbeginning the difficult work ofdevelopment and transformationleading to a much effective presencein the world than our present, well-used procedures allow.Comhaltas through the 'Meitheal'initiative has set about this task with34