Arts and Culture

Throughout 2020, both before and after pandemic restrictions were introduced, RTÉ continued to offer emotionally enriching arts and culture content. We necessarily adapted in response to the practical challenges and operational constraints posed by Covid-19. We maintained the core of our Arts and Culture broadcast schedules while successfully devising new ways of working, including multi-platform broadcast productions designed to inspire and provide solace and meaning to audiences.

Television

For RTÉ One, we commissioned two further series of The Works, each featuring interview portraits of five significant Irish artists, with the second series capturing the impact of Covid-19 on the subjects’ lives and livelihoods. Other highlights included:

HERSTORY: Ireland’s EPIC Women, a ground-breaking six-part documentary series made in conjunction with BAI and EPIC, with accompanying podcasts and digital resources, that told the stories of some of Ireland’s most remarkable female pioneers in the fields of business, politics, science, the arts, aviation and technology.

Creative Kids, funded by Creative Ireland, a one-hour TV documentary inspired by the roll-out of Creative Schools, a pilot project focusing on creativity and the arts in primary and secondary schools all around Ireland.

O’Casey in the Estate, which cast a spotlight on modern-day urban Ireland through the prism of one of the country’s most iconic modern plays.

Making a Museum: The Story of MoLI, an observational documentary following the design and construction of the Museum of Literature Ireland.

We also created a virtual edition of the An Post Irish Book of the Year and began a new series, Soundtrack of My Life, fronted by Nicky Byrne and featuring guest artists performing with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra.

Radio

RTÉ lyric fm continued to provide its regular broadcast output despite the cancellation of so much live music-making. This included audience-focused daytime shows with embedded culture-themed feature items and a range of documentaries and music genre-specific evening and weekend slots. We found innovative ways to bring live orchestral music to a wider audience, with live radio and live streaming of specially designed RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra concerts, made in conjunction with www.rte.ie/culture and RTÉ One television.

We also developed a new broadcast series of concerts from the RDS, featuring the RTÉ Concert Orchestra with diverse guest artists, which were video streamed online. Opera continued to feature on lyric and www.rte.ie/culture, despite the cancellation of so much live work. A special broadcast and online partnership with Wexford Festival Opera included a premiere broadcast performance of What Happened to Lucrece by Andrew Synott.

On RTÉ Radio 1, arts and culture programming continued unabated, featuring a diverse range of music and topical literature programmes. The key arts magazine, Arena, played an important role in following the devastating impact of the pandemic on the arts sector. It told the tale of the demise of virtually all public performances before an audience, and the resourcefulness shown by many in experimenting with online technologies to reach audiences. In traditional music, The Rolling Wave added a successful podcast strand that increased listeners’ interaction with the show, and a new commissioning project, inviting 10 composers to write a new piece of Irish traditional music based on their experiences of a year of Covid-19.

We continued to broadcast original writing for Sunday Miscellany and, for the Writing on One series, commissioned essays by writers introducing the work of their peers, including essays by Afric McGlinchey, Siobhán McSweeney, Selina Guinness, Martina Devlin and Cathy Sweeney. RTÉ Radio 1 broadcast leading writers reading excerpts from their books, including Edna O’Brien reading a specially edited version of James and Nora: A Portrait of a Marriage and, for Book on One, Joseph O’Connor reading from Shadowplay, Sinéad Gleeson reading from Constellations, Rosita Boland reading from Elsewhere, Sara Baume reading from handiwork and Doireann Ní Ghríofa reading from A Ghost in the Throat.

Prior to lockdown in March, Radio 1 music highlights included a special series of Simply Folk from New Orleans and sold-out broadcast performances from Bord Gáis Energy Theatre of The Songs of Leonard Cohen with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. Under different circumstances later in the year, we presented the RTÉ Concert Orchestra Presents Sounds of Summer and offered a unique virtual version of the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards in November.

Orchestras

Both the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra began the year with performances and broadcasts before live audiences. However, the impact of public health restrictions from March onwards resulted in a fundamental reimagining of how the orchestras could be used. During periods of lockdown, they experimented imaginatively with virtual recordings and, when health and safety considerations permitted, assembled in socially distanced formation to perform and broadcast with reduced numbers of musicians.

The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra presented an autumn series of 14 live performances from the National Concert Hall with guest artists including soprano Claudia Boyle and principal conductor Jaimie Martin. These were broadcast live on lyric fm and live streamed on www.rte.ie/culture, and 10 selected concerts were also subsequently televised on RTÉ One.

Also in the autumn, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra created a series of six multi-platform concerts featuring a broad range of popular music performed with guest artists, including original John Lennon arrangements, a musicals evening, seasonal themed concerts for Christmas and New Year and the premiere of a centenary-themed work by Paul Frost, The Burning of Cork.

Online

One outcome of the suspension of live events was a growth in online engagement, with www.rte.ie/culture experiencing record numbers including 1 million page views monthly and a 120% rise in year-on-year traffic. The Culture page played an increasingly important role, not only in presenting our own multi-platform events – such as the Illuminations gallery, the Other Voices: Courage series of live concerts and the live RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra Autumn Series – but also by offering a platform to many important arts and culture productions, such as Dear Ireland from the Abbey Theatre, 20 Shots of Opera from Irish National Opera and featuring RTÉ Concert Orchestra, and Solar Bones from Kilkenny Arts Festival and Rough Magic Theatre Company. Online content also broke through on social media platforms, as illustrated by the success of Imelda May’s poem You Don’t Get to Be Racist and Irish, which received over 1 million views on the Culture Facebook page while topping the most-read list across RTE.ie.

Special events

Inspired by the challenges of lockdown, we pioneered new multi-platform projects intended to provide both solace and inspiration. These included a series of light-themed events, Shine Your Light, commencing with a key RTÉ-led moment on Easter Saturday evening across all platforms when everyone was encouraged to light a candle as a symbol of hope.

From that moment in April grew a year-long project that brought art and artists to the public at a time when that connection was missing. The Shine Summer Concert, filmed at the Iveagh Gardens, the National Concert Hall and RTÉ, featured performances by musicians and spoken-word artists including Dermot Kennedy, Denise Chaila, Villagers, Celine Byrne, Cormac Begley, Anna Mieke and John Boyne; a companion programme, Shine On, featured Dermot Kennedy and Denise Chaila performing with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and was available on the RTÉ Player; Illuminations was an online gallery of original commissions in music, literature, spoken word and visual arts; and Shine Your Light: Solstice, produced in association with The Creative Ireland Programme, culminated in a music and words special on RTÉ One and featured commissioned works from Marina Carr, Moya Cannon and Manchán Magan and music from Christy Moore, Sharon Shannon, Damien Dempsey, Erica Cody and Clannad.

Without the prospect of live audiences, we reimagined our usual approach to celebrating Culture Night in September, with a Nationwide: Culture Night Special made with the support of the Arts Council. This showcased a sample of the Culture Night activities taking place across the country, with complementary additional content on rte.ie/culture and RTÉ Radio 1, and the RTÉ One television programme culminating in I am Ireland, an original contemporary dance piece commissioned from award-winning choreographer Emma Martin and her company United Fall.

Digital Arts In October 2020, RTÉ Player delivered a special offering from Wexford Festival Opera’s 2020 programme of events, available to stream worldwide live and on demand, including the Falstaff Chronicles and What Happened to Lucrece, while live performances from the festival included Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, Dinner Time Recital with Celine Byrne, and Claudia Boyle and Pietro Adaini in concert. Other Voices: Courage was a unique intimate concert format, streamed live on Other Voices YouTube and published to RTÉ Player the next day, featuring bands and artists as diverse as Ye Vagabonds, Lisa Hannigan, Denise Chaila, Kodaline, Fontaines D.C., and Mick Flannery and Susan O’Neill.