Temple Bar tries for more culture

ArtScape: Temple Bar Properties has announced it is to develop "a new Cultural Quarter Centre", writes Aidan Dunne. The new development, in the building that formerly housed DesignYard in Essex Street, will be an information and service centre for the area.

When DesignYard closed last June, it created yet another gap in Temple Bar's cultural quarter, together with the erstwhile Arthouse and the Viking Museum. Last year, the Indecon report on DesignYard concluded that significant aspects of its activities were being increasingly addressed by the private sector, pointing to the existence of two design galleries, The Bridge and Whichcraft, close by. The Designer Jewellery Gallery was the strongest strand of DesignYard and most observers felt that it should be viable, particularly if located in a building designated as being for cultural use and hence enjoying preferential rental terms. Whichcraft duly rose to the challenge, acquired DesignYard's title and assets and wrote to Temple Bar Properties, asking for a meeting to explore the possibilities of gaining occupancy of the DesignYard building. The announcement of the establishment of the Cultural Quarter Centre effectively puts paid to that possibility. It could well be that the crux relates to the definition of cultural use, jewellery design being an area where art and commerce unavoidably overlap. The closure of DesignYard and Arthouse, particularly, have dented Temple Bar's reputation as a cultural quarter, but converting one of them into an information centre is unlikely to restore confidence. In fact, it seems like a particularly lame response to the demise of DesignYard. Information about Temple Bar is not lacking and is already available in, for example, the headquarters of TBP in Eustace Street. The former DesignYard is a substantial building and its projected role hardly utilises its character and scale to best advantage. It is not so much "a new public cultural centre", as TBP's chief executive, Dermot McLaughlin, termed it, as a theme park that disguises the absence of a cultural centre. Gerry Crosbie, MD of Whichcraft, said he regretted "the failure of TBP to enter into discussion on revising DesignYard in Temple Bar. Today's decision shows a lack of foresight on behalf of Matt McNulty and his board. The decision will deny more than 200 jewellers an immediate opportunity to showcase their work in Dublin and will have a knock-on effect on job creation".

Council hits ground running

It seems the first meeting of the new Arts Council may have been more than a jolly getting-to-know-you session, to judge by the speedy issuing of a letter from arts programme director John O'Kane on the thorny subject of multi-annual funding (MAF). The letter, seen by The Irish Times, says the council gave "initial consideration" to the progress of the MAF review, and that it intends as a matter of priority to carefully examine the full implications of the review and to meet later this month to discuss it.

In the meantime, the council decided that all organisations participating in MAF should make a fresh a application for annual funding from the council (to ensure they have an equitable chance to be considered for funding). The letter refers to the "anxieties" which companies on MAF may be experiencing about the security of their funding from the council.

This development comes after all the fuss and energy expended - by both the council and by groups applying for funds - over the introduction of the MAF scheme. To arts bodies, it seems like MAF was no sooner established than a question over it started to grow. What after all is the point of jumping through hoops to secure a funding commitment over a number of years, if in one deft cut to AC funding by McCreevy, the carpet can be pulled out from under the scheme?

With this crisis facing the status of MAF, John O'Kane undertook a review of the increasingly beleaguered scheme, and the council will be discussing it at its meeting this month. This "interim" move swiftly following the meeting of the new council - which comprises plenty of people with hands-on knowledge, from the receiving end, of what's happening with the scheme - can't bode well. And everyone concerned is holding breath in advance of the Estimates.

Hot tickets

With two weeks before the Dublin Theatre Festival and just over a week to go before the Dublin Fringe festival begins, preparations are hotting up. At the DTF the hottest tickets seem to be for Performances at the Gate, The Lieutenant of Inishmore and Far Side of the Moon, with the Tiger Lillies also in demand. Tickets are generally selling very well, but with increased capacity and longer runs, there is still good availability on shows.

The Fringe reports brisk ticket sales, with the Asian Dub Foundation/La Haine soundtrack opening event sold out (they're encouraging disappointed ticket buyers to look at Pipeworks' presentation of La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc with organ accompaniment in St Patrick's Cathedral). In fact, the Fringe says the box office has sold five times as many tickets as it did by the same time last year - and even taking the opening night show out if the equation, they're still selling three times as well as last year. Other big sellers are OTC's Jurgen Simpson opera Thwaite, Lia Rodrigues' - Such stuff as we are made of, the Tiny Niinjas' Macbeth, Gavin Friday at the Spiegeltent, POC's Paris Texas, and Camille O'Sullivan. They're predicting that this year's Ladies and Gents (as in, a show in a "boutique" venue with a tiny audience) is Helen Herbertson's Morphia Series from Australia.

And this week, the Fringe announced the Spiegeltent line-up in Wolf Tone park, which is almost a mini-festival in itself. Events in the 1930s Belgian mirror tent include Gavin Friday, Maria Doyle-Kennedy, Camille O'Sullivan, Maria Tecce, and Sean Millar. Gerry Godley with Improvised Music Company is programming world-music including Ludovico Einaudi, Michael Buckley, Billy Jenkins, and the Kai Little Big Band, along with performances by Shane Howard and Terrafolk. Hot from Edinburgh, Kiwi band The Flight of the Conchords present their folk-parody show, other international guests include Miss T & the Japanese Tourists and Penny Arcade, and local talent Tina C, Justin Carroll, Double Adaptor and Trouble Penetrator.

There's dance from Tapestry and Oguri, classical meets contemporary with the Dublin Guitar Quartet, Crash Ensemble, and Pierre Bastien, and comedy from Anne Gildea and Susan Collins, David O'Doherty, Phil Kay and the quirky Kevin Gildeas, and A Little Mor visual art. There's also a programme of afternoon salons, with the Critical Voices hosting a free lunchtime series of informed debates from artists and producers, and there's a week-long Critics Forum on the practice of theatre criticism in an Irish context. There'll also be a recording of RTÉ's Rattlebag and BBC Radio 4's Loose Ends presented by Ned Sherrin. See www.fringefest.com

Markson stays on

Gerhard Markson, who opens the final season of his current contract as principal conductor of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra next Friday, has had his contract renewed for a further three years.

RTÉ's director of music, Niall Doyle, voiced delight at the fact that Markson agreed "to continue the very successful relationship for a further three years," and Markson declared himself "very pleased with this expression of trust and confidence by RTÉ and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra".

Markson has been closely involved in the orchestra's thematic programming of recent years, conducting a well-received Bruckner cycle last year, and he has also been associated with the cogent return of opera in concert performance (Strauss's Elektra, Beethoven's Fidelio) to the orchestra's schedule. He's also been adventurous in his presentation of work new to Dublin.

However, earlier this year, when he conducted the orchestra on its first US tour, the orchestra's Lincoln Centre appearance attracted a mixedreview from Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times. And the flow of recordings for Naxos that might have been expected after his appointment (he had been recording works by Richard Strauss with the RTÉ NSO for the label) never actually materialised.

And furthermore . . .

• The Arts Council is looking for a part-time music specialist. Nollaig O Fionghaile was music officer before her one-year contract ended this summer. The job has now changed, and the new specialist will be expected to produce a strategy for the development of music, and to monitor its implementation; to advise the AC on artistic promise and achievement in music and to work with AC staff in delivering the council's strategic objectives for music. Deadline is Monday, September 29th.

• The Irish Film Institute's (IFI) 11th Open Day (actually the first under the IFC's new name) next Saturday is a day-long free event celebrating cinema history and IFI's activities. Ten comedies will be screened including a surprise film. Free tickets on a first-come, first-served, basis and limited to two per person per film from the box-office at 10 a.m. but queues are expected from 8 a.m. IFI, 6 Eustace Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2. See www.irishfilm.ie

• This year, there may not be much call for an input into an Irish space programme, but Kitsou Dubois's talk this afternoon at Project in Dublin sounds fascinating. The French choreographer who works in developing efficient movement for astronauts in zero gravity and her presentation is part of the Intelligent Body/Arts Council's Critical Voices lecture series. It's free, open to the public, today at 3 p.m. Critical Voices website: www.artscouncil.ie/criticalvoices