Michael Moynihan: The most unlikely buildings have potential to create an artistic boom

If the only people who can afford to be artists are those with the independent financial resources or family money, then our notions of art become narrower

Odlum’s building, Cork: Not the most aesthetically pleasing building but it has the potential to be much more. Picture: Larry Cummins

Over the weekend I read an interview with Debbie Harry of Blondie, who was happy to reminisce about her old stomping ground (and era), New York in the seventies.

One of the memories she retained of an edgy time — it was when policemen in the city handed out flyers to newly-arrived tourists headlined WELCOME TO FEAR CITY — was a happy one: impoverished artists could carve out a space in the city where they could write, paint, perform, or do whatever the muse suggested.

Harry recalled one contemporary in particular whose installation consisted of spending a week in his downmarket loft alone. With a wolf.

Notwithstanding the fact that in my own younger days I saw a few downmarket lofts in Cork that would have sent a wolf screaming back in fear, this set me to thinking about artists’ spaces generally, and on Leeside particularly.

In doing so, of course, one has to bow the knee gracefully to the initiative announced last week in Dublin. If you’re late to the table, our friends in the capital have been proactive in trying to provide space to work for creative people. 

(A brief note on usage: creative people is acceptable. ‘Creatives’ will earn the user a one-way ticket to the uncomfortable chairs in purgatory.)

Anyway, to address the “urgent need for more artists’ space in Dublin, the Arts Council and Dublin Port Company have been working together since early 2022 to explore options within the Flour Mills Masterplan site,” we learned from an Arts Council release last week.

Dublin Port has contracted architects for a feasibility study on the Flour Mill Artists’ Campus on the agreed site: “The artists’ campus intends to provide artists’ studios, experimental performing and visual arts spaces, sound-proofed rehearsal rooms, workshops, co-working spaces, conference and meeting spaces across 5,000 square meters in the old Odlum’s Flour Mills area at Dublin Port.”

There’s something striking about the fact that we have an Odlum’s building in Cork as well. A building that isn’t being used at all.

There’s something beyond striking — almost galling — about the fact that the latter building already looks tailor-made for “artists’ studios, experimental performing and visual arts spaces, sound proofed rehearsal rooms, workshops, co-working spaces, conference and meeting spaces”. Stand outside the Odlum’s building in Cork and you can envisage that work going on behind the tall windows.

Anyone who’s visited Tate Modern will recall the lively atmosphere of the Thames-side waterfront nearby.

I’m sure that it could be repurposed for those uses if the will were there. You don’t have to look too far for working examples which could be used as a template: if you go to London for a weekend you might dander past the Tate Modern building, which in a certain light might remind you of our Odlum’s edifice, with its steep frontage overlooking a stately river. Tate Modern was of course the Bankside Power Station before it was transformed.

If you go north from London, and Tate Modern, and up the east coast of England you’ll eventually hit the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art on the Tyne at Gateshead, which was a flour mill before it became a home for modern art.

(What is the link between flour and modern art spaces? Does it have something to do with memories of papier-mâché?)

These are outstanding examples of organisations using pre-existing buildings which aren’t just in sympathy with their environments but which, because of their long association with a particular area, are intimately identified with those areas.

The Odlum’s building in the docklands and the R and H Hall tower nearby offer Cork a chance to combine the aesthetic appeal of both Tate Modern and the Baltic in one building, almost, which would help with the accompanying revitalisation of the neighbourhood.

Anyone who’s visited Tate Modern will recall the lively atmosphere of the Thames-side waterfront nearby. A similar village ambience along from Albert Quay, linking up with the nearby Marina Market, would only draw more people along the riverfront from the city centre and turn them towards the water.

Why isn’t this being done in Cork?

It’s instructive to see what agencies in particular are at work in the Dublin example. The release which announced the partnership between the Dublin Port Company and the Arts Council appears to mention the relevant local authority, Dublin City Council, only once. 

And that reference is a throwaway mention of research carried out by DCC which shows that workspace for artists is limited within the capital; I believe ‘throwing shade’ is the term favoured by the young.

It’s also instructive in the sense that it might serve as a blueprint for a similar initiative in Cork — rather than knocking on the door of the local authority, a Leeside project involving the Port of Cork and a similar building or set of buildings might be a more productive option.

(Of course it would also mean the Arts Council looking a little further afield for partnerships than Alexandra Road, where the Odlum’s buildings are located. By my reading of Google Maps Odlum’s is roughly three miles from the Arts Council’s office in Merrion Square.)

Encouraging step

All told, though, the Odlum’s plan is an encouraging step, particularly when considered along with the announcement last week of a new Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme.

If you missed that headline, 2,000 artists were chosen after ‘a randomised, anonymous selection process’ to receive a basic payment of €325 a week; presumably some of those will be involved in the (Dublin) Odlum’s scheme as well.

There is a danger that only people who can afford to be artists will follow their dreams.

This is important not just in terms of the well-established benefits of art and creativity to the population as a whole, but in giving access to creativity and the arts to all.

The danger is that if the only people who can afford to be artists are those with the independent financial resources or family money to be subsidised in their endeavours, then that excludes a mass of people without access to such resources.

If that happens it ensures that our notions of art become narrower.

The experiences of sizeable sections of the population either don’t exist in artistic form or are not represented authentically.

The reflexive conclusion is usually that that exclusion is class-based, shutting out those who have to work for a living and can only create in their spare time. And that exclusion is often class-based, but it can also be geographical.

If Dublin-based artists have greater access to facilities and resources than their Cork-based peers, then which of the two cities are more likely to enjoy an artistic boom?

Which is more likely to benefit from the boost to confidence and self-esteem driven by that artistic representation — and to benefit from the virtuous circle whereby art flourishing in one place will draw future artists to that place?

Cork has to be proactive in this and other areas, and not just complain that Dublin has advantages. Otherwise where will we house our wolf-based art projects?