‘I’m waiting for somebody to say, I love Dublin – it needs a fantastic cultural infrastructure’

“The bee I have in my bonnet, and have had for a long time, is venues,” Willie White says. “Not only the lack of venues but the lack, as far as I can see, of a vision to address the crisis in venues in Dublin city centre.”

Over the past 20 years, multiple venues in the capital have closed or been razed, including City Arts Centre, Andrews Lane Theatre, the Tivoli, the SFX and the Mint @ Henry Place. “At the same time,” White says, “the city has grown, and the funding has grown, and there seems to be no concern as to what an adequate infrastructure is for culture generally in the city.

“It’s not just theatre and dance, but all the nightclubs that are gone, and the people who can’t put on club nights because licensing is prohibitively expensive or they can’t make spaces safe and fireproof. It’s really difficult to get things started here and to do interesting stuff.”

Cultural spaces can’t compete with capitalism. It’s not because nobody likes going out. It’s because you’re outbid or the site is sold

White, the director of Dublin Theatre Festival, argues that Dublin needs a new 500-seat municipal venue between the two canals. A Dublin City Council feasibility study by Turley Consultants – City Theatre of Tomorrow and prompted by White’s motion at the council’s strategic policy committee in 2021 – identified a “clear supportive rationale” for such a venue, although the council’s current development plan, for 2022-28, doesn’t include provision for one.

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“There’s been enthusiasm for facilities like whitewater rafting,” White says. “There’s been no similar enthusiasm for cultural facilities. The last big wave of city-centre building was Temple Bar, and that’s 30 years ago. Before that, the Abbey ...

“The thing is, capital projects are much more difficult to deliver, much slower, more complicated. It’s more difficult to build a theatre than it is to increase funding to the arts really significantly, as the Government did – and it is very welcome, and overdue, but that isn’t necessarily followed with adequate studio facilities, gallery facilities, performance spaces.”

“An excellent venue, for hire at a reasonable rate”, he says, could be used by several artistic festivals, pantomimes, commercial producers and established production companies. “My fear is that even if the conclusion is, yes, Dublin needs a 500-seater venue, it will take many more years again to deliver. Meanwhile, we will have had really inadequate cultural infrastructure,” says White.

“I felt the city development draft was very passive. Dublin City Council cast itself as an enabler, a facilitator, a supporter of other people’s initiatives. It’s not for lack of interest that this doesn’t happen. It’s because cultural spaces can’t compete with capitalism. It’s not because nobody likes going out. It’s because you’re outbid or the site is sold because there’s a more attractive offer. The council can be a guarantor of such a space.”

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White mentions Edinburgh, where venues owned by the local authority are available to festivals, and Manchester International Festival, which this month opened the Factory. White describes it as “a phenomenal new venue designed by a starchitect, funded and championed by the council. This is a festival with serious ambition, serious money, serious council buy-in. The festival chair is a developer”.

He adds: “What we’re missing here, too, is widespread cultural philanthropy. There’s a lot of wealth, and individuals are, of course, generous to galleries, to charities. But I’m waiting for somebody to say: ‘I love this city – it needs a fantastic cultural infrastructure that is appropriate to the art of today’.”