The creative city

During the past five years over 2,000 Dubliners have taken part in a series of weekend creative workshops run by Dublin Corporation. The workshops are free and they are open to anyone over 18 years of age who is involved in community or amateur arts.

The workshops take place in spring and autumn and, while the current spring series is fully subscribed, places are still available on a number of the autumn workshops. Tutors for the courses are all drawn from the professional world of the theatre, music, literature and the visual arts and the aim of the courses, according to arts officer Jack Gilligan, is to help raise standards of performance, presentation and professionalism among community and amateur groups in the city.

"The initiative started as a response to groups who were not getting very far on the small amounts of funding we were able to make available to them," he says. "We had limited resources and we felt that small grants were probably not the best way to spend what we'd got. So, we decided to put our money into a series of professionally run workshops with actors, directors and other arts professionals who would share their skills and experience with participants in a practical, hands-on way.

"We opted to make the workshops broad-ranging in subject matter in an effort to involve as many people as possible. We cover everything from writing and directing a play to teaching people the basic elements of drawing, to various aspects of stage craft, to music appreciation, mask making and how to sell your show to the public."

The workshops all take place in or near the Corporation's premises in Parnell Square and they run over a full day on both Saturday and Sunday. Booking is essential and, as places are limited, the advice is to contact the Arts Office soon for information about the autumn workshops.

"We allocate places on a first-come-first-served basis and, as soon as the notices go up, we are inundated with applications," says Gilligan. "Underpinning the workshops is a hope that we can provide people with an opportunity to experience the arts in a way that will encourage them to become more involved in whatever aspect interests them most.

"We wanted to give equal access to all so the workshops are totally free and we get people of all ages coming. Our age range is literally 18 to 80.

"We also focus specifically on aspects of the arts which sometimes get forgotten in the overall plan. For example, we have a course on stage make up as this is something amateur groups often leave to people's own devices with disastrous consequences! We also found that groups often made huge efforts to put a show together but forgot about needing an audience to support them and were very disappointed when only a few people turn up. So, we have a workshop dealing specifically with how to sell a show.

"I suppose we're trying to get across to people that the arts are for everyone and that there should be no barriers to participation. So, if someone always wanted to draw or if they always wanted to know more about opera or classical music, then this is their opportunity.

"We also feel these workshops are important from the point of view of training people who will then go out into their communities and put their skills to use with local groups. For some people it may be a stepping stone to a paid job in the arts if they equip themselves to a point where they become trainers or tutors with skills that someone is willing to pay for."