For four decades the Project Arts Centre has been at the heart of Dublin's cultural landscape.
Though it is now what might be regarded as an institution, the premise for its establishment back in the mid-1960s was the desire by its founders to create an alternative counter-culture to the city's artistic mores of the day.
At a time when the ideal of the co-op was very much in vogue, the move to set up an artists' collective which would initially serve the ideas of a number of more radically-minded painters and sculptors was innovative. What was even more imaginative was the bringing together under one roof of a variety of other disciplines: dramatists, musicians, actors and theatre directors.
With the later addition of facilities to show films, it was before its time as the State's first multi-purpose arts centre, and one that was clearly independent of the mainstream. As one of those involved in the early days of the centre, writer Peter Sheridan reminds us in this newspaper today that Project's "mission was to let new voices raise us from our slumbers".
If there was a common tendency in the work presented in the venue it was towards social engagement. The climate of the time still had a gloomy air of repression about it: literary censorship was in force and watchful eyes kept vigilance for artistic expression that strayed from the acceptable norms.
The creation of the Project was very much part of a new emerging spirit of defiance, as much a political gesture as a statement of cultural intent. Idealism, energy and commitment were its hallmarks and one of its great achievements was to find a new and younger audience for the arts. The space it created - a genuine melting pot - played an important role in pushing boundaries and bringing excitement and experimentation to the arts.
It has not been without its controversies, some of them to its credit and others not so, especially the hostile attention it created among the visual arts community a few years ago when its exhibition spaces were left redundant.
The roll-call of names associated with the Project illustrates the extent to which it has often been the seedling ground for the future of a whole range of art forms in Ireland: Neil Jordan, Jim Sheridan, U2, Liam Neeson, Rough Magic theatre company, Dorothy Cross and the Crash Ensemble among many others.
The fact that it has travelled from its humble beginning in a city basement to its status as a cultural institution does not today, and must never, get in the way of the idea from which it was born: to take on the system with a challenging approach to the making of art.