Project Arts Centre

Project Arts Centre
	Project Arts Centre Location within Central Dublin
Address	39 East Essex Street; Temple Bar, Dublin; Ireland
Coordinates	53°20′42″N 6°15′58″W / 53.345°N 6.26624°W
Owner	Auditorium 200 seats; Cube 80 seats
Type	Theatre and gallery
Construction
Opened	1967; 57 years ago
Rebuilt	2000
Years active	1966 to present
Architect	Shay Cleary Architects
Website
	www.projectartscentre.ie

Project Arts Centre is a multidisciplinary arts centre based in Temple Bar, Dublin, which hosts visual arts, theatre, dance, music, and performance.^[1]^[2]

History

Project Arts Centre was founded by Jim FitzGerald and Colm O'Briain in 1967 after a three-week festival at the Gate Theatre in 1966. Project Arts Centre was the first such arts centre in Ireland.^[3]

The Centre had several homes before it opened for business in a converted factory on East Essex Street in 1975,^[1] after numerous issues regarding funding.^[4] This building was demolished in 1998 and a new purpose-built space containing two auditoriums, a gallery and a bar opened on the same site in 2000,^[5] as part of the second phase of the regeneration of Temple Bar.^[6] The presence of the Centre, along with a number of other cultural institutions in Temple Bar, such as Irish Film Institute, the Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Black Church Print Studios, the Gallery of Photography, and Temple Bar Music Centre (now the Button Factory), inspired the regeneration of the area as a cultural quarter.^[7]^[8]^[9]

The Centre

The centre has been a venue for many of the city's performing arts festivals, including the Dublin Dance Festival, Dublin Writers Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival and Dublin Theatre Festival. Since the Irish recession there has been an emphasis on cross-cultural productions.^[10]

In 2018, street artist Maser painted a mural in support of the Repeal the 8th "pro-choice" campaign, but the Centre was pressured by the Irish Government to paint over it.^[11]

References

^ ^a ^b e-flux. "Project Arts Centre". e-flux. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
^ Playography Ireland. "PROJECT ARTS CENTRE". Playography Ireland. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
^ Benson, Ciarán (1992). "Towards a Cultural Democracy". Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review. 81 (321): 23–33. JSTOR 30091647.
^ Sheridan, Peter (1977). "The Theatre and Politics". The Crane Bag. 1 (1): 68–71. JSTOR 30060132.
^ Project Arts Centre. "About Us". Project Arts Centre. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
^ McCarthy, John (2002). "Encouraging Culture-led Regeneration" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 December 2013. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
^ Cooke, Philip (2008). "Culture, clusters, districts and quarters: some reflections on the scale question". In Cooke, Philip N.; Lazzeretti, Luciana (eds.). Creative Cities, Cultural Clusters and Local Economic Development. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 36.
^ Montgomery, John (2005). "Dublin, Sheffield, Manchester and Adelaide: Cultural quarters as mechanisms for urban regeneration". In Charlesworth, Esther Ruth (ed.). Cityedge: Case Studies in Contemporary Urbanism. Oxford: Routledge. p. 86. ISBN 9780750663533.
^ Bayliss, Darrin (2004). "Creative planning in Ireland: the role of culture‐led development in Irish planning". European Planning Studies. 12 (4): 497–515. doi:10.1080/0965431042000212759.
^ McIvor, Charlotte (2011). "Staging the "New Irish": Interculturalism and the Future of the Post–Celtic Tiger Irish Theatre". Modern Drama. 54 (3). Archived from the original on 18 February 2015. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
^ "► VIDEO: Project Arts Centre removes Repeal mural". www.irishtimes.com. Retrieved 7 November 2020.