Goodbye to the docks

If the Graphic Studio wanted to stay in the Docklands, and if it fits the bill as meriting a place there, how come it has moved? Aidan Dunnereports

When the history of the redevelopment of Dublin's Docklands is written, the saga of the Graphic Studio should form a fascinating chapter. The Graphic Studio, one of Dublin's most venerable contemporary arts organisations, was originally based in Upper Mount Street and, since 1980, in Green Street East, in other words about as deep into Docklands as it's possible to get. The workshop was situated in a stone-built 4,000 sq ft (372 sq m) Victorian warehouse, spacious though notoriously cold, with a formidable array of presses and other equipment.

Apart from providing facilities to its roughly 60 members, the studio engaged, and continues to engage, in a large number of projects, including its exceptionally successful visiting artists' programme - involving another 40 or so artists to date - which pairs artists with master printmakers, and one-off exhibitions in co-operation with such institutions as the National Gallery and the Chester Beatty Library. It also runs a gallery, the Graphic Studio Gallery, located in Temple Bar.

The Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA) was established in 1997. Its development plan, however, was not published until 2003. The plan states that the authority will: "encourage the consolidation or expansion as appropriate of existing cultural facilities". The provision of residential and workshop accommodation which would "attract arts and crafts people to live in the area" is also stipulated, as is the desirability of drawing on the existing cultural heritage of the area.

Apart from these purely cultural considerations, the authority is also committed to "supporting current employers in the area". The Graphic Studio was just such an employer during its years in Docklands.

Recently, however, the Graphic Studio Dublin acquired a new premises, relatively close to Mountjoy Square, on the North Circular Road. As the studio's chairman, Brian Lalor, and administrator, Mory Cunningham explained, it wasn't that they wanted to leave Docklands. Quite the reverse.

Since the establishment of the DDDA, they say, they had been in contact, trying to secure the future of the studio. They did not own their building - it was destined for redevelopment, and they had to move. It was the dispiriting lack of response from the DDDA, they say, that eventually forced them to accept that they would have to look elsewhere.

FOR THEIR PART, the DDDA say they regret the studio's move from Docklands. Arts manager Mary McCarthy says: "I've had a lot of contact with Mory. I think it's a great pity that the Graphic Studio is leaving Docklands. I was sad when she told me about it. But at the same time, I'm glad for them. They have managed to get a very good building, and they are still in the inner city."

Loretta Lambkin, DDDA's marketing manager, echoes the sentiment: "I'd love to have seen them stay in Docklands."

If the Graphic Studio wanted to stay in Docklands, if it fits the bill in every imaginable respect as an existing organisation meriting a place in the emergent Docklands landscape, and if the DDDA wanted it to stay in Docklands, how come it has moved? The message from the DDDA seems to be that, despite the considerable powers they would seem to possess on paper, in reality they have little room for manoeuvre, few resources, their hands are tied, and that there was nothing they could do.

"The DDDA," McCarthy says, "owns very little property. I know that Paul Maloney [the DDDA chairman] has made concerted efforts to identify suitable buildings for the Graphic Studio."

Lambkin, too, cites the lack of suitable property: "We don't have a property that would suit their requirements. Any possibilities are still a couple of years away."

Not that she is saying there will be possibilities, when pressed. Specific commitment is impossible because: "the situation changes all the time."

As Cunningham expresses the studio's dilemma: "We could have waited several years more and still have no idea if they would actually support us."

The implication of the DDDA's position is that there never was a place for an organisation like the studio in the new Docklands, that in certain relevant respects the development plan's cultural aspirations are mere platitudes.

It's not that the studio was looking for a hand-out from the DDDA. After all, using its own resources, the organisation has bought a 7,000sq ft (650 sq m) building in central Dublin.

So, one could indeed argue, the story does have a happy ending for the studio. And in many respects it has: it has a fine base in the city, which should be one of the best fine art print facilities in the world when it is completed, and an enviable degree of financial and artistic autonomy. Yet, at the same time, one feels that it should have been accommodated in the Docklands, not as a troublesome supplicant but as a valued tenant, helping to give cultural substance and shape to a revitalised part of the city.

In its initial incarnation there is no question but that the DDDA had difficulty in making sense of the cultural aspect of its brief. The Graphic Studio was treated with a combination of incomprehension and indifference.

With regime change at the DDDA, and the more recent of appointment of McCarthy, the studio members thought that change was in the air. Maloney had experience of cultural initiatives from his time with the Dublin City Council. McCarthy had been in the thick of Cork 2005, the European Capital of Culture. But, after seven years of negotiations with the DDDA, the Graphic Studio was told that it was starting from scratch, with a clean slate.

The plain truth is, that slate wasn't clean and they were not starting from scratch. In fact, part of the problem seems to be that the DDDA regarded the Docklands as a clean slate when it has many layers of history and community. The DDDA seemed fundamentally unable to grasp the point that the Graphic Studio was part of the community it inherited, and not a pesky interloper trying to grab a piece of the action.

As lease-holding residents of a building in Green Street East, the Graphic Studio was a stakeholder in Docklands. In contrast to their experience of the DDDA, they point to their successful co- operation with the Dublin Port Authority on several projects.

At a meeting last January, a 12-month timeline was established. It was agreed, Cunningham says, that after six months the DDDA would update them with indications as to possible buildings. When no such indications were forthcoming, she says, they finally accepted that they were on their own and had better make hard decisions about the future.

Her own view is that, for the DDDA, "the Graphic Studio was not high enough up on its list of priorities." In fact at one meeting early on, they were told there were two lists of priorities, and the studio was not even on the first.

WAS NOTHING forthcoming from the DDDA at all in terms of potential premises? Cunningham and Lalor say that the only solid response was an invitation to bid, starting from quite a high price, on a space which turned out to be a concrete bunker type enclosure, studded with pillars, "like an underground car park", with no natural light at all. At that stage they were so disorientated by the long process of non-negotiation that they momentarily considered putting in a bid before realising that the space was completely unsuitable and unworkable for their needs.

In talking to the DDDA, it has to be said, there is a curious distance and vagueness about the question of the studios, as if it is utterly remote from their responsibility. It's hard to disagree with Cunningham's point about priorities.

Perhaps a grassroots organisation, long established in an area, even one involving 100 working artists in one way or another, doesn't have quite the bling factor of the U2 Tower or the Daniel Libeskind-designed Grand Canal Theatre, but it is hard to see the departure of the Graphic Studio as anything but a worrying failure on the part of the DDDA.