Keeping artists in Cork

Brian Kennedy and Vera Ryan of the Cork Printmakers are matching square feet and money with flair and certainty, and their confidence has brought to fruition £1 million worth of planning for a new arts space in Cork, writes Mary Leland. This is the Wandesford Quay Project, the restoration of a four-story, riverside, granary building. Printmakers and the Backwater Artists group are working towards the opening next January of a courtyard complex of print workshops, studios, a commercial exhibition gallery, sculpture yard, community room, computer suite and restaurant. In a property exchange arrangement, Cork Corporation took over the granary, which it will now rent to the new company forged by the two organisations. With the building secured and its value (approximately £250,000) matched by the Arts Council, the £498,000 from the CITS fund came through as well. "This is the biggest visual arts development in the country this year," says Vera Ryan, noting that their case was substantially made for them by the designation of Cork as "a centre of excellence in the visual arts" in The Arts Plan of 1994-1998.