‘I know it’s not utopia, but …” Author Sarah Moss has made a decision, she tells the audience at Imagining Ireland. She’s moving to Ireland to discover whether the country of her imagination can survive the test of lived experience. Striking a note of guarded optimism that captured the mood of the evening at Galway’s Black Box theatre, the English author joined an ensemble of young Irish musicians and some of the most distinctive female voices in contemporary Irish literature, including Sara Baume and Elaine Feeney.

The irreverent, funny, unabashedly feminist performance emanated quiet confidence, which must have helped to steady the nerves of the artistic team behind Galway 2020, following a weekend of anticlimax. Having planned for months the open-air spectacle of light, fire, drumming and music to celebrate the start of Galway’s year as European capital of culture, organisers had to cancel it at midday on Saturday, due to Storm Ciara.

Radie Peat performing at Imagining Ireland in Galway. Photograph: Julia Dunin Photography

The formal handover of the title of European capital of culture took place on Saturday afternoon, and despite disappointment, there was still a sense of occasion. The EU commissioner for trade, Phil Hogan, emphasised the importance of cultural relations and cultural diplomacy in Europe at this moment – the role of arts and culture in the European project is to “tear down barriers and build bridges”.

Some of the bridges in most need of buttressing are closer to home. A bumpy start to the Galway 2020 project brought tensions and a turnover in key senior personnel. Funding remains a vexed question, with a modest €2m (£1.68m) raised in sponsorship so far, instead of the €7m aimed for, against public funding of €25m. On Monday, an additional €2.5m requested from Galway City Council was refused, leaving its contribution at €6m. (€15m has come from the Department of Culture and €4m from Galway County Council.) In a statement, Galway 2020 CEO Patricia Philbin said some projects would have to be scaled back, and the team is “disappointed but resilient”.

“It has been difficult,” admits creative director Helen Marriage. Her London-based events company, Artichoke, has decades of experience putting on large-scale open-air and community arts projects. Risk is always part of such work, but Marriage has never had to cancel an event before and she is clearly upset about it. Arriving in Galway early in 2019 to take up where the departing creative director left off was not easy either.

For the year-long celebration, Marriage and her team have commissioned a range of high-profile projects in partnership with European funding organisations, artists and companies. In March, there is an immense illumination by Finnish light designer and artist Kari Kola, deep in the mountains of Connemara. The spring programme includes international stars such as Laurie Anderson and Margaret Atwood.

Hope floats … a version of City of Light, City of Sanctuary in Liverpool last year. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

The 2020 programme’s themes of migration, language and landscape “connect to central questions about identity”, says Marriage. “What does it mean to be a Galwegian now, when a quarter of the area’s population were not born in this country? Galway is the most diverse place in all of Ireland. And what does it mean to be Irish and European, to be a progressive European nation in an EU that is fracturing?”

Projects exploring this theme include one created with a primary school in Galway city where 39 languages are spoken by its pupils. City of Light, City of Sanctuary, meanwhile, will create a floating miniature city of lanterns to evoke the idea of home at a time of mass displacement. A new community opera called Paper Boat, composed by Elaine Agnew, will also take on exile and sanctuary.

“It’s not about only being local,” says Marriage. “My role was to look at Galway from the outside in.” She was drawn to projects that were unorthodox and unusual. “The programme is not about duplicating what’s there already. It’s [about] finding a new way of articulating what that sense of identity is now, while the nation is under the spotlight … It’s a statement of values.” She says it is important to provide some free events and to involve the community – including asylum-seekers and Travellers.

Galway has long been a magnet for artists from Ireland and abroad, thanks to the pioneering work of individuals and groups who came together in the 1970s and 80s to establish Druid Theatre, Galway international arts festival and Macnas street theatre ensemble, among others. Many more arts organisations have been added to that list over subsequent years: Cúirt festival of literature, Galway Film Fleadh, Babaró children’s arts festival, Galway theatre festival, plus Music for Galway, Galway Arts Centre and Branar children’s theatre company.

Presenting arts festivals is demonstrably what the city does best; what happens in between these bursts of activity is what concerns many practitioners, who hope that Galway 2020 might be a catalyst for more lasting change. Whether that legacy takes the form of infrastructure – new performance venues and rehearsal spaces, or a permanent contemporary art gallery – is open for debate. More fundamentally, artists need consistent funding to live and make work throughout the year and reach audiences in the rural areas.

A Macnas event in 2017 … organisers hope Galway 2020 will create a lasting legacy for artists. Photograph: Julia Dunin

In this, Galway typifies the reality for many Irish artists. Among the pressing issues facing the new government and the incoming director of the Arts Council of Ireland will be the need to address the working and living conditions of artists, as well as economic barriers to participation in the arts. In the EU, Ireland has the lowest investment per capita in the arts.

Noeline Kavanagh, artistic director of Macnas, hopes the European capital of culture will help artists innovate and realise their potential. Her own project for the event is a series of multimedia promenade performances and installations. Macnas will stage episodes from the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh in four phases for each season of the year, working with a young, multiethnic cast, an international design, sound, music and film team, and the playwright Marina Carr.

“It is on a scale that wouldn’t be possible without Galway 2020,” says Kavanagh. “We can really take a risk with this. Forty years of art-making here have got us to this point where we can play to the world. As a Galway-born artist, the coming year allows me to enable the next generation to have a platform, to create new work, new art forms even. Succession is essential but how do you sustain it?”

“The year is an opportunity for the arts to be seen not as a commodity to be measured, but as essential to society,” she says. “Artists are the guardians of the unpredictable; of the imagination, but we need to be supported. We can’t be expected to live on nothing.”

Even an imagined Ireland needs some grounding in reality.

• Full details about Galway 2020 are here.