On one of Belfast’s oldest streets, the smell of ink seeps out from behind a door on to a narrow staircase.
Harrison Ford stares down from a vintage Blade Runner movie poster and heavy metal music is muffled by thick walls.
Beyond the door, apprentice tattoo artist Caoimhe Kelly is making coffee and pulls up a flared trouser leg to show us an etching – her first – of a cartoon kitten above her ankle.
Two enormous 19th century windows flood the room with light.
“I’ve been here a year, I love it. I’ve a fine art background – I went to art college in London – but always been into tattoos and wanted to come home. It’s more friendly,” says Kelly who grew up in Draperstown, a village in Co Derry.
“There is a serenity about this space… but I think it’s one of the saddest streets in the city. We’re a wee bit of colour.”
A year ago, the same room had no ceiling and was filled with rubble; Japanese pop art now covers solid skimmed walls.
North Street – once the commercial hub of Belfast where flour merchants traded alongside saddlers, clock makers, leather merchants, tea stores and wig makers in its 1850s heyday – is filled with derelict graffitied buildings.
“It’s desolate, isn’t it?” says James Conway, looking across at the boarded up cafe beside a vacant picture-framing business, art suppliers and comic book memorabilia shop.
A former architect who quit the profession within months of his first job – “there was way less art than I thought” – Conway opened Skull and Bones tattoo studio two years ago in a street earmarked for investment as part of a 10-acre regeneration project in the city’s Cathedral Quarter.
The Tribeca scheme has since stalled despite planning permission being granted to a development company in 2020.
“The plans for the area were amazing, that’s why I took this place. When I signed the lease the walls were wet, it’s hundreds of years old. The ceiling was leaking and there was a bucket in that corner,” he says, pointing to an area crammed with ink bottles.
Conway is stencilling an intricate Japanese tattoo on the arm of first-time customer Clarke Sterling, who works in logistics and is using last year’s Christmas voucher from his girlfriend.
They are on the smaller ground floor of the shop where two other artists are working; the mood is light and talk is of 16-year-old darts player Luke Littler’s semi-final win in the world Darts Championship the previous evening. Walk-ins arrive at the counter even though it’s the first week of January.
Conway commutes from his home town in Lurgan, Co Armagh, to the North Street premises where eight other freelance staff – including their apprentice – are now based.
Within a week of opening the new business at the end of the pandemic, he received a £3,000 rates bill from Belfast City Council.
Pointing upstairs, he says the revamp and extension were only made possible through a £15,000 grant from the council; his is one of 15 independent small businesses to benefit from the £1 million pot of Vacant to Vibrant funding.
The capital grant scheme opened in July 2022 in response to the high levels of city centre vacancy and aims to incentivise property owners and potential occupiers to bring “vacant Belfast city centre spaces back into use while supporting the city’s revitalisation”.
A bridal shop and art studio have also received funding.
When Conway moved into the shop, he discovered there was an attic above it.
“We climbed up and saw this massive space. It was literally rubble, there were no electrics or plumbing or floors. There had been a fire a few years ago and it had no ceiling, you could see the roof. The windows and red brick are the only original features left.
“I asked the landlord if I could have it but he told me it would cost a fortune and I wouldn’t be able to get it done.
“I went and looked about for grants. The council helped with about half the cost, it was about £32,000 in the end. I couldn’t have really done it without the grant – mind you I had to jump through hoops to get it, especially when it’s for someone else’s building. It’s a lot to spend.”
A second-hand book shop, barbers, bookmakers and historic bar are all that remain on this section of North Street once known as Goose Lane – where farmers drove geese to feed in fields outside the then town more than 300 years ago.
Students cut through the street to attend the nearby glass-fronted new Ulster University building where US President Joe Biden delivered his keynote speech during his first visit to Northern Ireland last year.
How does Conway feel walking down this street to work each morning?
“It’s sad to see the state of it. There’s no shops, there’s not really a reason for coming down here. What are you going to buy? We’re totally forgotten about.
“Yet it’s one of the main arterial routes of the city, you’re so close to the motorway and then you have the new university and all the accommodation. Castlecourt (shopping centre) is behind us (on the main Royal Avenue thoroughfare) and then there’s the Victoria Square shopping development. It is such a prime street but it’s just falling to rubble.
“It would be class if it had the proper investment.”
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