With the British Council as a senior partner, there were always doubts that Belfast 2024 would rise to the ambitious goal it set itself of "ignit(ing) a new chapter for our city".
Thus far, the multi-million pound festival (£5.9m from City Hall alone) has hardly turned a page in our great city's story, never mind open a bright new chapter.
It could hardly be different, of course, when the majority of the ratepayers of Belfast are unaware the festival even exists.
None of that is to gainsay the gallant efforts of the community partners who have climbed aboard the Belfast 2024 charabanc — many of whom are in dire need of the funds sloshing around in the Belfast 2024 coffers.
However, it does point to the short-sightedness of lavishing funds on short-term sensations - even one like Belfast 2024 which promises in its mission statement to "bring about transformative change".
Nevertheless, let's not lay the woes of our arts sector at the door of the gold-plated programme of Belfast 2024.
For the buck stops with the Executive when it comes to cold-shouldering our arts groups.
Under successive administrations at Stormont, the Arts Council has seen its budget (excluding Covid uplifts) flatline for the past 14 years. No wonder our arts community enviously eyes the €140m budget enjoyed by their Southern counterparts.
There was some optimism that the newly-minted Stormont Executive would look more favourably on the straitened Arts Council. Those hopes were well and truly dashed, though, when the Minister with Responsibility for the Arts didn't bother to turn up for the May launch of the Council's ten-year-plan.
All things being equal and united, the Arts Council of NI, if funded pro-rata with the South of Ireland, would expect an annual stipend of around £42m. Instead, it must get by on a piddling £10m or so.
Amazingly, despite persistent underfunding, our artists remain a beacon of Belfast. This week's TradFest and the upcoming Féile an Phobail and EastSide Festival demonstrate the ingenuity and commitment of our community-building arts promoters and practitioners. Indeed, anyone who had the good fortune on Sunday to visit the Titanic Slipways for the opening céilí of TradFest would have been left in no doubt about the power of the arts to reconcile and celebrate this changing city.
Yet TradFest — a festival that has put traditional music on the map in Belfast and made the city's bid to host Fleadh Cheoil na Éireann in 2026 credible and unstoppable — received just £3,000 from Belfast City Council for last weekend's Titanic Céilí activities and has been on standstill funding from the penniless Arts Council for the past three years.
This penurious approach contrasts sharply with the spendthrift attitude to Belfast 2024.
And it also does begs the question if whether those making these funding decisions, rather than tilting at temporary British Council windmills, might better invest for the long-term in our hard-pressed arts groups.
