12 minute read
First Year Diary Final Year Diary
By Aine Fogarty
Well, what a month October has been. I’m writing this from my living room at home, because we’ve been put in a six-week lockdown and I chose to give up my accommodation. The new lockdown wasn’t much of a shock to me and I doubt it was for you.
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The fact that labs and practicals are still going ahead shocks me. To think if I had chosen a course with practical parts to it, I would’ve had to stay on campus for 6 weeks and not return home, or chance using public transport shocks me. The fact that I can’t be refunded for those 6 weeks and had to empty my room and possibly return in February, with new roommates shocks me. If you can’t tell already, I’m not impressed with how this situation has been dealt with by the college!
What has kept me relatively sane during this time is I recently joined twitter and discovered ‘NUIG Confessions’. It has kept me from having multiple breakdowns and I am forever grateful to all you people out there anonymously confessing your inner thoughts! Coming into this course I didn’t expect to be having near breakdowns so soon, but I was wrong. Assignments are descending and tutorials are in full swing. My workload is piling up and the first two weeks of November are already filled with assignments due. Why do assignments all decide to be due in the same week?
One thing we don’t have to do this year is figure out how our college work and college social life will balance out. This pandemic has made sure of that. Hallowe’en has been officially cancelled and even though I’m too old to trick or treat, I would’ve thrown quite a tantrum if I didn’t get my sweets when I was young. Since we can’t go out and have a spooky night with friends, I have some ideas for you! Plan a list of scary movies with your friends and have a marathon online. Since there’ll be little trick or treating, there’s loads of sweets in the shops that haven’t been bought. Binge on sugar while you carve a few pumpkins with your family or friends. Just because we can’t be together in person doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy the spooky season.
I know this lockdown has dampened our spirits more but just think of how close Christmas will be once these weeks of lockdown are over. That’s what I’m thinking of to stay positive and hopefully we’ll have some snow too.
by Tom Molloy
Level 5 lockdown is finally amongst us, probably a couple of weeks later than it should be. Six weeks of restricted movement and limited contact with others. To be honest, I’m very happy with my lockdown situation. I’m spending it down in Limerick with the most important person in my life. Others are not so lucky so we must keep them in mind. If we all do our bit, we can have some semblance of a normal Christmas this year and perhaps even get the chance to travel abroad to see family members and friends.
At least we still have sport. Some funny happenings in that universe recently. Mayo coming down to Tuam and winning for the first time since Poker Face was top of the charts, although to be fair Mayo play in Tuam these days about as often as Lady Gaga does. Aston Villa and Leeds occupy two of the four Champions League places over in England at the time of writing. Everyone is on the ‘90s nostalgia bandwagon now, even the Premier League apparently.
I’m getting used to online learning now, although the temptation to participate in classes whilst staying in bed remains great. Still beats missing them altogether I suppose. No incidents of note during my online classes over the last fortnight, although the same can’t be said for poor old Mark in Maynooth. Things may change by the time I write my next diary entry however, as essay time creeps closer by the day.
I promised myself that I wouldn’t use this opportunity as a mouth-piece to vent about things that annoy me, because that would be incredibly immature, but there is one thing that has gotten on my nerves since lockdown started looming: the gyms. I find it incredible how a lot of gym-goers are calling for gyms to remain open in the middle of a oncein-a-century global health pandemic. We all like to imagine that our individual hobbies are more special than others’, and it’s true that our interests are important to our wellbeing, but insisting your hobby should be facilitated during these times is bordering on insane. You can lift a few weights at home and do some aerobic exercises within 5 km of your home if you need to. The gym selfies can wait until all this is over. Invest in a set of weights just like an avid movie-goer would invest in a Netflix subscription.
So, as always, stay safe and look out for each other. Chat soon.
Comhairle Chomhaltas na Mac Leinn AN FÉIDIR LEATHSA BHEITH AG CEANN AN tSLUA?
Contact studentsunion@nuigalway.ie for more info Déan teagmháil le studentsunion@nuigalway.ie le tuilleadh eolais a áilBí í d’Ionadaí Ranga! Le tuilleadh eolas a fháil, dean teagmháil le su.education@nuigalway.ie
GET INVOLVED
Ways to get involved with your SU this year Bealaí le páirt a ghlacadh i do Chomhaltas i mbliana Take the Charity Challenge Glac páirt sa Dúshlán Carthanachta Become a Class Rep Bí i d’Ionadaí Ranga Join the Welfare Crew Glac páirt sa Chriú Leasa ♥ Run for Election Seas sa Toghchán Join the Event Crew Glac páirt sa Chriú Siamsaíochta
Creative jobs are real jobs: artists need more support through this pandemic
By Fiona Lee
It’s an old and exhausting conversation in Ireland and around the world. As much as we enjoy, appreciate, show off and celebrate creative artists, we don’t value their work as ‘real’ work. The Fatima Advert has packaged the rhetoric of ‘it’s time to get a real job’ very tidily, just in time for the pandemic that has destroyed the entertainment industry, with little hope in sight.
For those of you not familiar with the advert, it was pulled in the UK just a few weeks ago. It features a ballerina putting on her pointe shoes, captioned “Fatima’s next job could be in cyber, she just doesn’t know it yet – Rethink, Reskill, Reboot”. The campaign, which also features images of people from other walks of life, was created for UK’s ‘CyberFirst’ in 2019, which is described as “a government outreach and education programme run by National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)”.
However, very little people consider it relevant that the ad was not directly made in relation to the pandemic, as it just confirms how dismissive the UK government has always been about careers in the arts. Even our own Minister for Social Protection, Heather Humphreys, stated “Some jobs will not come back and there is no point in waiting... It is best that we help people to re - skill, retrain and look at other jobs they can take up”.
As a former Minister for the Arts, this feels like a mighty blow to the Irish Arts community.
SIN spoke to Youth Ballet West’s Artistic Director, Judith Sibley, and John Conneely, head man of a band of diverse musicians that hold residence in the Roisín Dubh on Sunday nights. They shared their experiences as artists in this time of crisis.
Judith was disgusted by the Fatima advert,
“There were 12 photos used in that campaign, but I think the reason the Fatima picture got so much response was because so many little girls wanted to be ballerinas when they were little, so it basically said ‘don’t have dreams’ and do something ‘practical’. As someone who has worked in the arts for 27 years, it’s so insulting. Even when I was a dancer, people would say ‘What’s your real job?’. This is my real job! I have an apartment; a car and I go on holidays. I know a lot of people struggle financially in the arts, and I stress that I was never wealthy, but I always worked and I was never unemployed.”
The idea that being an artist isn’t a ‘real’ job is not foreign to John either,
“It’s easy to say ‘sure look, just retrain’. It’s a historical and systemic joke in Ireland that if you’re a musician, or if you don’t work in a bank or a school, the question is ‘when are you getting a real job?’ The government’s reaction to this crisis in the arts shows that this has never really changed.
“People are always happy for Irish artists, musicians and actors getting out there and banging the drum for the sake of the country, but the Covid-19 crisis just shows how they truly value our contribution to Irish society”.
Despite the comfort and stress relief that the arts give us day to day, we still take it for granted, and only realise how much we miss gigs and performances once they are gone.
“When everyone went into lockdown, the first thing people did to alleviate stress was to go to the arts, be it film, TV, music or live theatre online, whatever it is, that was the first protocol. It gave people a way to cope to be able to deal with all this”, said John.
The serious concern of the affects that the pandemic will have on artists’ careers is not lost on them, and John and Judith truly worry for the future of the industry. Judith especially fears for her students only beginning their careers as dancers.
“I have cried, not for me, but for my students. I have had young dancers in their 20s calling me, working in supermarkets, that were in dance companies. It’s so hard to get into a company.
“I’ve trained 40 dancers in Youth Ballet West to go on to vocational schools abroad. It is a job! I currently have two girls in my adult’s class, which is going to Zoom now, that were formally trained by me and then trained abroad. One was working in Italy in a company and one was working on a cruise ship. They are going into a career that is decimated and my heart breaks for them. They worked their whole lives to get to where they are, and they were succeeding.
“Some of them are trying to retrain because we don’t know when theatres will reopen. A lot of theatre companies are not highly funded, they may never reopen. These dancers will not get their jobs back. It’s devastating for them” she told SIN.
John sees no end in sight and feels like the government is not doing enough.
“The payment is grand but it’s the dole no matter how you break it down. It’s necessary of course and the Covid-19 payment was amazing at the start of this lockdown, everybody panicked, and it was a relief. But now the issue is, when does this stop?
“When do the bars open again? This payment is just a payment to the landlord, it’s for your bills and that’s pretty much it. A lot of us are in the process of writing and recording, trying to make the best of this situation in lockdown, but that being said, there is no certainty going forward. It doesn’t look like anything is going to happen until Summer 2021, and that is a very long way off.
“They should be open to trying new things. We got lucky here in Galway that we got picked up to do the resident Sunday night in the Galway Summer Garden. It was like a small Body & Soul; it was very well organised and it was great. They should start exploring more things like that, but of course this can’t happen in Level 5.
“I understand the theory behind this lockdown, but it feels awful that we are all being told to stay at home and not work, when there are planes landing in Shannon airport from the US, and people from the UK are travelling back and forth all the time”.
Judith is also frustrated with the response from the Irish government, especially towards dance not being considered a socially distant activity.
“As far as I can see, I am an educator, as important as any teacher. Ballet is the most socially distant art form because you need to able to swing your legs front, side and back!
“We’re all working in pods, our studios are way bigger than classrooms and there’s no dancing across the floor anymore, we dance on the spot. We can track and trace way better than any school. We don’t even do barre work. They stay on the spot! Parents were helping us ensure that distance was maintained in classrooms, and they were so happy that the classes could come back.
“I invested so much money in my studio, I got an air purifier, an official Covid-19 sign cost me €175! I bought hand sanitiser, and paper towel dispensers that were €110 each. I invested so much for just a few weeks. We’re trying to be allowed to open at Level 3.”
My brother runs a venue, An Táin Arts Centre, and he made a statement pre-lockdown saying “I’m delighted that we can continue our cultural activities in An Táin, with our drama and our music, but I have no understanding why we can’t carry on our ballet lessons, classical ballet is the most socially distant of art forms’. It’s a complete oversight”.
The arts have been left in the cold. They have been lumped together and shoved to the side, considered a lost cause and being diminished by, once again, politicians not considering creative careers as ‘real’ or worth fighting for. We can’t lose our artists.
Judith points out that no one in tech has ever been told to become a ballet dancer or a musician, because they can’t, nor do they want to.
“It’s too hard a career, I think you have to be slightly mad to be an artist. Dancers don’t become dancers because they’re good at it, they become them because they have an innate need to be a creative artist. It’s almost not a choice”.
Let creators create. Let them perform. If the government can push as hard to find ways to support the artists of Ireland the way they have to keep the GAA afloat, they will get amazing work done.
Let’s do all we can to support the people who have given our lives the colour, emotion and joy that we all feel drained of now that they’re gone.
