I'm boilin' so I am

My grandfather is buried in Co Wexford. His grandmother owned 13,330 acres of the county (that's +2% of the dry-land area - the mean holding per head being 5 acres!) in the 1870s shortly before The Ganfer was born. For that or some other reason, I'm signed up to an e-mail feed from Wexford CoCo Arts Department. Round about Epiphany they sent out a call to arms:

OPEN CALL NEW VOICES SHORT FILMS FUND 2024

Funding will be available through the scheme to support a number of short films. We are seeking entries from narrative film, documentary and animation.
A fund of €10,000 will be shared between a selection of a maximum of 3 successful applicants. This will cover genres of drama,documentary and animation.
The award also consists of mentorship from leading industry professionals, as well as some in kind support of  lighting equipment hire  and film equipment hire.

At the beginning of December, I coughed up some folding money to GoFundMe a film being built by a young team of my acquaintance, based in Dublin, and invited y'all to do the same. Their fund-raiser has ground to a halt [last donation 7 days ago] at €2,305 of a €3,000 goal. I deduce that offering €10K to support max 3x short films is within the normal range of expectations. Who knew? €3,000 is a lot to spend on Mars Bars; but reasonable for a reliable car? 

What had me chewing my beard in vicarious frustration is that the award appears to be limited to a) consultancy fees b) equipment hire. The also in the third sentence of the announcement is porting a lot of water if there is another interpretation. The CoCo Arts Department seem to think it is okay for the creatives in their care to be part of the voluntariat and/or independently wealthy like my Grampa's Grannie. Thus:

• It is okay to funnel money to established "mentors" who have presumably made it financially. 
• It is okay for HireAll companies to generate some turn-over. 
• But it is not okay for the actual creatives to buy food or clothing or pay the rent with the money

That all is not okay. Many of my oldest friends have been making Art for their entire adult lives. This funding model is absolutely standard practice in the Arts world. What happens is that, as established authors big each other up in blurb-rings of mutual back-scratching, so artists ladle the money into each other's bowls: My contract allows me to employ someone else to film my dance; your contract allows you to give a per diem to extras; their contract allows them to buy paint from her supply shop; her contract allows her to have a dancer launch a new product-line by Rowney. None of them can use the money, which they win in competitions, to stave off the wolf or put shoes on their kids' feet.

+30 years ago, before the launch of Science Foundation Ireland SFI at the turn of the century, science funding could be a bit like that. In the early 90s I knew a couple of chemists who were completing PhDs, generating copy and kudos for their supervisors, while working as a barkeep to live: they got no salary. My first three research grants (from the Donegal Historical Society; BU Sigma Xi and the Nuffield Foundation) assumed I had a regular income and provided the money for travel and reagents. That assumption was only true the third time round.

IF the Arts Council and parallel Arts funding bodies really want to get more artistic creation out there, THEN they need to crank up the funding and pay salary to successful applicants. For science funding I've long asserted that piffling the money out too thin does not serve Science well. It means underfunded small sample sizes, inadequate to answer any of the research questions posed. The €10,000 films fund should be a €10,000 FILM fund: €4K to make the film; €5K for rent; €1K for groceries including a bottle of old red biddy for Saturday night after a hard week chasing the Key Grip and Best Boy round the camera dolly.