Partnership to deliver varied arts programme

The recently launched Limerick Arts Encounter is an initiative aimed at enabling the city’s arts practitioners to deliver a varied programme with funding from the Arts Council.

This development, in partnership with the Lime Tree Theatre and Limerick City Council, is a response to the closure of the Belltable Arts Centre which went into liquidation last January.

As Limerick’s city arts officer, Sheila Deegan points out, the closure of the Belltable was a huge blow to the cultural sector. “For amateur acting groups and schools to professional companies, the Belltable is a brand. The building, at 69, O’Connell Street, is in the ownership of Limerick City Council as it was handed back to us as part of the liquidation.”

The Limerick Arts Encounter has secured Arts Council funding of €120,000 for six months, bringing it up to Mar 2014. The money is purely for programming. “It’s an opportunity to showcase and support events that might have taken place in the Belltable. Parallel to that, city council has agreed to undertake a public consultation around the future of 69, O’Connell Street, what it could and should be. Part of the reason there is frustration around the closure of the Belltable is because people feel it was part of who they are and part of what Limerick is.”

As Deegan says, “the landscape has changed. Everyone is competing for the same funding. The Arts Council has changed the way it funds theatre. Now, lots of practitioners are joining together to make applications. Theatre practitioners are probably feeling the loss of the Belltable more than anybody else because it was a place where they could show their work.”

Now, they will be able to use the space with the overheads paid for by city council and Lime Tree Theatre providing ticketing facilities and front of house staff.

Following the closure of Daghda dance company in 2011, its space at St John’s Church lay empty for two years. Daghda, the venue, re-opened last week.

Theatre producer, Monica Spencer, says this will reinvigorate the city. But she emphasises that there are many questions to be asked about Limerick’s cultural facilities. Spencer is a member of PLAN (Professional Limerick Artists’ Network) formed in March following the Belltable closure.

“PLAN came about as a result of people wandering around, putting on plays and events in hotels and bars and wondering what they were going to do. There’s still a lot of that going on.”

She says that when the Belltable closed, “people began to ask if an arts centre of the scale of the Belltable (which seats just 220) was adequate as the only downtown theatre facility in Limerick. We’re in discussion with Limerick City Council. What we want is for there to be a period of research and discussion around the whole idea of what the city can sustain in its centre. It’s a very interesting time in Limerick. There are many kinds of artistic disciplines with an increasing blurring of the lines between them. People will be looking for different kinds of flexible spaces; not just fixed theatre spaces.”

While the Arts Council budget of €120,000 for six months is miniscule, Spencer says that “it has gone into the hands of the artists working in the city which is quite revolutionary.”

Next year, Limerick will be the first designated National City of Culture. “We’re looking at work that will sustain into the future.” Spencer says that while times are tough, “we can’t say that we’re without opportunities at this stage.”