A new centre in Dublin is hoping to become a community hub, writes Sinead Mooney
Seomra Spraoi consists of two storeys of a rundown building in central Dublin that aim to be whatever you want them to be: cafe, library, rehearsal space, meeting room or arts-and-crafts workshop - often all at the same time. Bright parachute material hangs from the ceiling, its colours sparkling off a glitter ball hanging from the ceiling. Couches united only by their ageing springs line the walls.
"We don't have a lot of money, and having a sustainable ethos - getting stuff from skips - ties in with what we are doing, as long as it's quality," says Mark Malone, one of the organisation's members.
Founded by a small group of like-minded individuals who felt there was a lack of practical resources to serve their interests, Seomra Spraoi describes itself as a "gathering space without a profit motive"; it is modelled on the independent social centres that you'll find in cities all over Europe.
"It's slightly ridiculous that people have properties for 30 or 40 years and let them fall into decay when they could be used for public services," says Malone.
As they prepare for today's official opening, someone is putting up shelves for the new library. An arts-and-crafts workshop has just finished, and people are milling around. A woman is sitting under a noticeboard advertising the Shell to Sea campaign, eating a sandwich. It goes without saying that the coffee is a Fairtrade brand.
The centre draws on a pool of some 50 people to help maintain and run the space, which hosts events and allows groups to use the meeting space. If you think, however, this is a crafty way to book a cheap city-centre meeting room you'd be mistaken. Seomra Spraoi is political with a capital P, and its leanings are firmly to the left.
Its calendar includes events as diverse as anti-authoritarian parent and child groups, storytelling, radical "anarcha-feminist" meetings, film screenings (think documentaries on Indonesian punk rather than Knocked Up) and a table-tennis club that can get "quite competitive".
"We're not a traditional geographical community group; we're a community of politics. We don't just provide a service; the groups that use the space are involved in organising the space, so I'd imagine groups on the political right probably wouldn't want to use it, because the ethics wouldn't suit."
Maybe so, but are they managing to pay the rent, given their prime location, opposite Gary Rhodes's Dublin restaurant? Yes. Just. Two months into their two-year lease, they have a system of standing orders and donations in place, and the landlord is sympathetic to what they are trying to achieve.
In the midst of a city where celebrity-chef restaurants compete with cathedral-like shopping centres for our custom, it seems almost nostalgic to speak about collectives where money-based transactions have no meaning. Yet it's working. Seomra Spraoi is getting things done. Watch this public space.
Seomra Spraoi, 4 Mary's Abbey, Dublin 1, www.seomraspraoi.blogspot.com