OUR HISTORY

The philosopher Herbert Marcuse wrote "Art doesn’t change the world, but it may change the consciousness of the people who can change the world.”

Art needs space and space is costly. To make a community arts space affordable and manageable, where the cost and upkeep work could be shared, in 2003 our former Artistic Director Bertrand Perennes followed this philosophy when he opened the Studio with No Name at 107 Shandon Street in Cork. Other artists joined and they outgrew the space, so in 2007 the group moved to the much larger Reliance Building on Andersons Quay.

By 2009, having become too large even for that space, the group opened Camden Palace Hotel Community Arts Centre, . This 34,000 square foot complex on Camden Quay had been derelict for some years and required a Herculean effort by volunteer scaffolders, carpenters, riggers, painters, plasterers, builders, cleaners, glaziers, roofers and others working for months to bring it to a standard where it could be used as an arts centre.

In 2017 the owners of the premises (who were content that we used it at nominal rent) had to transfer their property to National Assets Management Agency who sold it for redevelopment, so we had to leave after eight very successful years. We moved to a much smaller building on John Redmond Street where we continued for another year, but it was not adequate for our space needs. However, it proved that our model of management is sustainable at the larger scale at which we had operated. Hence our plans to open a new centre of similar size.

To ensure its financial and community engagement sustainability, we accept that it needs to be in a city centre location. This will raise the price of the new centre, (we estimate Six Million Euro) but once the centre is opened, it will survive indefinitely as a self-financing centre for Community Arts.