Supporting the arts
Stories from our archive
About this project
To mark our 60th anniversary, the Arts Council is publishing stories about the arts using documents from our archive. Beginning with 15 stories from the early years of the Arts Council, (1950s) this site aims to show the intricate connections that existed and continue to exist between the artists, the organisations that supported them, the public they served and engaged with and their relationships with the contemporary arts.
The Arts Council in the 1960s
‘It would not be overly harsh to describe the Arts Council in the 1960s as a clubbable group of men who made decisions on a case-by-case basis concerning the distribution of a relatively small annual fund, which stood at £20,000 in 1960 and rose modestly to £70,000 by the end of the decade.’
Mr Pat Cooke
UCD School of Art History & Cultural Policy