Final closure?

Following the closure of the City Arts Centre last month, the future of the facility remains uncertain. Founded in 1973, the Centre has been located at Moss Street beside the Docklands area since 1987, providing a gallery, venue, rehearsal studios, workshop space and café bar, all with access for people with disabilities.

Centre-users and community groups are campaigning against the closure, fearful that the building will be sold to private developers. A public demonstration, with music and street theatre, took place outside the Centre on November 29th, the same day the C.A.C. officially ended its programme of projects.

Workshops by the Gaiety School of Acting, the National Youth Theatre for the Deaf, two dance groups, a life drawing class, the Dublin Cyclist Group and the Dublin Co-housing group have to find alternative accommodation. The majority of Centre staff have now been made redundant and the thirty bands who use the rehearsal rooms have had to remove their equipment from the building.

According to City Arts Centre Board Member, Niall O'Baoill, certain long term residents of the centre, including the MaSamba Samba School, an Arts and Disability organisation and the School of International Training have been guaranteed access to the building until the end of the year, with every effort made to accommodate their projects.

Aeveen Kerrisk is a director of the College Semester Abroad Programme for the School for International Training, which rents office space in the centre. According to her "the decision to close was taken at very short notice, with virtually no consultation with user groups, the community or the general public. It will mean the irreplaceable loss of a cultural public facility in an area which has been taken over by financial buildings."

The board has issued a document to explain their position, entitled A New Beginning at the City Arts Centre, which states that the Centre has been closed pending a two-year research and review by Declan McGonagle, former director of IMMA, "aimed at determining the course of the City Arts Centre in the coming decades" in order to respond to the vast changes in community, arts and culture in recent times.

Niall O'Baoill does not deny the possibility that the building may be sold and the funds redirected to another cultural project, but insists nothing has yet been decided. He feels it's time to "re-envision" the future of community arts as, in his view, the field is no longer as "vibrant as it was 15 years ago, but has unfortunately been sapped by societal factors."

Niall refutes the suggestion that the board have not entered into dialogue with the user-groups, saying "We replied to anyone who requested to talk to us and had meetings with the user-group. That group has now split and one side appears to be taking some kind of political, anti-corporate stance. That particular group has made no attempt to contact the board."

Monica Flynn, a member of the CAC users group, has worked with various projects in the centre including the South Docks Festival and the Music Map Sound Course for people with disabilities.

"The Centre is a well-utilised facility where people have long been quietly doing fantastic work, even if it's not particularly high profile. If the board are aiming to instigate some high profile activities, then there's a risk the centre will no longer be as devoted to community organisations," she says.

A public meeting on the future of the City Arts Centre will be held in Donovan's Pub on Tuesday December 11th at 6.30pm.