[caption id="attachment_66559" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Minister Carál Ní Chuilín, left, pictured with actress Geraldine Hughes last week in New York."]
Minister for Arts, Culture and Leisure Carál Ní Chuilín used two words a good deal on her visit to New York in recent days: "opportunity" and "potential."
The occasion was the World Police & Fire Games, which Belfast will host in 2013. The Northern Ireland minister and her team wanted to see how the event was organized so they could best exploit the potential offered for the local economy in two years time.
"I see it all as opportunity," she said about a biennial event that attracts 10,000 athletes and many thousands more observers. "Everything's an opportunity."
That goes for her approach to her job, which she was appointed to in May. The Sinn Féin politician said that a large number of people in Northern Ireland are involved with sporting clubs and leisure activities, but she would like to find ways to involve those who aren't.
Ní Chuilín elaborated on some of her other priorities as head of the department: "How we are we going to get the people who aren't socially included, who don't feel socially included; how are we going to get them involved in culture, particularly arts, community arts," she said. "And how are we going to create opportunities for people who are doing great work but need a path to get access to opportunities for development?
"That is a challenge for me and it's one that I look forward to," she said.
Ní Chuilín said she would also like to encourage greater access and involvement by poorer communities with the top-class arts venues in the North. "It's a quite a challenge, but it's not insurmountable," she said.
The minister said that hundreds of millions of pounds will have been given to the building of stadiums and leisure infrastructure by 2015. Those high-value developments, she suggested, created potential for further investments. But Ní Chuilín said that there needs to be social clauses stipulating that apprenticeship opportunities be made available for young people in the surrounding neighborhoods that have high rates of long-term unemployment.
"There's been 30 years of massive underinvestment by the British government," she said. "It's going to take us a long time to reverse that, but I think this is a really good start."
Ní Chuilín said that many people active in leisure and arts activities have been working from a cross-community perspective for years. "And not in a superficial, esthetic way, but in a meaningful way," she added. She believes that sort of interaction will only increase.
"It's incumbent upon us to show leadership in that," she said of the political parties.
The minister, who is a former political prisoner, earlier this month accepted an invitation by the Irish Football Association to attend the Northern Ireland vs. Faroe Islands European Championship game at Windsor Park.
"It has caused a lot of discussion for want of a better term," she said, acknowledging that very few of her constituents follow the fortunes of the local international team.
"I thought at the very start of my tenure as a minister is that I wanted to be a minister for everyone, but within that the reality is that I'm an Irish republican and I live in what would be called a republican area," Ní Chuilín said.
"But at the same time I have to lead by example and going to the Northern Ireland game was a big first step and it's something we need to build on."
The game, which was won by Northern Ireland 4-0, was the first of its type attended by a Sinn Fein politician. (Her predecessor Edwin Poots, of the Democratic Unionist Party, made a similar gesture when he attended a GAA match during his tenure.)
The minister told local media that she enjoyed the game and that she wished the team well for the rest of the European campaign.
Her own favorite form of relaxation is listening to music. "Anything from bluegrass to Led Zepplin -- and Frank Sinatra in between," she said.
Ní Chuilín -- who has a 26-year-old daughter, two sons, who are 25 and 13, and an 8-year-old grandson -- said it wasn't possible to find the right balance between family life and her duties as a public representative.
"There is no balance. It's not a 9-to-5 job," she said.
"But I've got really great support at home. We took the decision as a family when I took up the position as minister for culture, arts and leisure," Ní Chuilín said.
