THE building which is host to Dorothy Cross's latest exhibition has, in the past been pressed into service as everything from an experimental school to "a party house for winos," according to one of the founders of the Model Arts Centre, Rory O'Connor. The Model School was built in 1850 as a pioneering multi denominational school, but after passing through many others uses, had been abandoned by the late 1980s, when a group of Sligo artists including the painter Sean MacSweeney and his wife, Sheila.
After many hours of unpaid work, the building, on a commanding hillside site in the town, was gradually brought back into useful order and opened to the public in 1991. The Centre appointed its current director, Jobst Graeve, a year ago and last week the Arts Council announced a grant of £85,000, a figure almost double that of the previous year. Added to that, funding for an expansive development programme at the site, which will see the opening of a number of artists' studios, workshops and the obligatory cafe is under negotiation.
Part of the Centre's development programme should see the re housing of the Sligo County Council's collections of 220 paintings by Jack Yeats and his contemporaries, currently living in the annex to the county library. The centre has, of course, a brief to offer space to much more than visual art. This year will it will also host a festival of early music and a festival of contemporary classical music.
Graeve's hope is that the developments in the Model Arts Centre will help nourish an arts infrastructure in the area, allowing artists to work in a cross disciplinary manner. The beginnings of this operation, an archive room with an Internet link, are already in place, but Graeve hopes to develop the services provided at the centre extensively.
Already the Centre gives space to a graphic design company, which in its turn supplies designs for invitations, posters and whatever graphic work the Centre might need, as well as designing the literary magazine, Force 10, which is now entirely originated at the centre. Along with the development of an art "incubator" comes an experimental approach to publicity, which has seen Graeve taking on a Dublin "blue chip" PR firm to handle publicity, initially for the Cross exhibition, but potentially for all Model Art Centre events which he thinks might require a national profile.
"We are trying to be a catalyst for Sligo, which doesn't just mean following what other organisations around the country would do," says Graeve. Why should we not try out new things?"
