- City Arts Centre, Dublin
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CityArts in Dublin, Ireland, is a community arts organization founded in 1973.
Originally named, Grapevine Arts Centre and later City Arts Centre, it occupied a number of premises in the centre of Dublin, beginning at Mary Street and then North Great Georges Street, North Frederick Street, Moss Street and opening at Bachelor's Walk in 2010. The organisation grew from a need by a group of teenagers in Dublin's culturally bleak mid 20th Century. This was particularly the case if you happened to come from a working class background, which was the case for most of the Grapevine founders, and is also the reason why the location of the centre was the unfashionable inner city's, North Side. The three main initiators of the project were Jackie Aherne, Anto Fahy and Sandy Fitzgerald.
As the 1970s progressed, the organisation became more culturally politicised, linking in with the radical community arts movement in the UK. This fruitful collaboration resulted in a wider world view and a move to work for a different perspective on culture, one that recognised difference and the rights of people with regard to cultural equality. Linking with similar projects that had emerged (notably City Workshop and Moving Theatre in Dublin and Neighbourhood Open Workshops in Belfast) in Ireland by the early 1980s, the community arts movement grew to be a force for change, resulting in new policies and perspectives that challenged the cultural orthodoxy. In 1984 the representative group CAFE (Creative Activity For Everyone) was formed, with Grapevine as a founding member.
Grapevine's artistic programme grew alongside its philosophical awareness and this programme was diverse and multifaceted and took place both within the centre, around the suburbs of Dublin and throughout Ireland. Examples of this diversity can seen through its street theatre programme, directed by Thom McGinty (later to become the Diceman), hair cutting, street fashion design studio, audio art, street events, gigs and random acts of fun in public places. They had an innovative visual arts programme directed for a while by artist John Carson, later of Artangel in the UK. This included early shows by John Kindness amongst others including an exhibition of drawings from the survivors of Hiroshima, organised in association with a young U2.
The relationship with U2 continued into the centre's next phase when, in 1988, there was a name change from Grapevine Arts Centre to City Arts Centre when the organisation occupied a warehouse building on Moss Street near Tara Street Station, then the largest centre of its kind in Ireland. U2 provided fully equipped rehearsal spaces for young bands in the basement. Over this was a cafe and theatre space initially run by Declan Gorman and above that a gallery space initially run by Tommy Weir. Sandy Fitzgerald continued as Director through to 2001. The Arts Council never fully backed the centre favouring the highly regarded Project Arts Centre, despite the City Arts Centre clear leadership profile for community arts.
The Centre actually owned this building, having bought it in a then run-down area. However, the property become rather valuable. There was an opportunity to create a large civic project, when a partnership between City Quay School to the rear of the centre and a community hall adjacent to the centre were brought into a scheme for an innovative socio/cultural project at the entrance to the docklands, then at the beginning of its transformation. The scheme needed a piece of vacant land that linked all the properties but Dublin Dockland Development Authority rejected the idea, although both Dublin City Council and The Arts Council, plus all the local representatives supported the project. As a result, City Arts Centre became an anomaly within the dockland development. Sandy Fitzgerald stepped down as director of the centre in 2000, after 27 years. City Arts Centre, under the directorship of Declan McGonagle, decided to sell the building and to close down its on-site programmes and to engage in what it called the Civil Arts Inquiry, a two year long series of meetings, events and symposia aimed at formulating the future needs and future direction of community art. This process proved to be extremely expensive and drained a good deal of the initial capital raised through the sale of the building. However, a new centre was opened on Bachelor's Walk in 2010 with another name change, this time simply called CityArts.
In 2004 the book 'An Outburst of Frankness: Community Arts In Ireland - A Reader' was published by Tasc at New Island. This book, edited by Sandy Fitzgerald, goes into some detail about the history of community arts in Ireland, backed up by essays on the theory and practice of this movement.
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