Waterford's business leaders can expect to be hearing more from the city's Garter Lane Arts Centre in the months ahead.
Developing new relationships with the business community is a priority of the centre's new artistic director, Ms Caroline Senior, who also wants Garter Lane to become more accessible to the community. She stresses, however, that in seeking more involvement from those who run the commercial life of the city, Garter Lane is not looking for handouts.
"I would hope we can develop relationships between companies and ourselves. Obviously there would be a cash element but there would be more to it than that. You have to give a company a sense of ownership of what they're buying into.
"In other words we would go to a company and say `how would you like this money to be spent? For the wider Waterford community? For yourselves? For corporate entertainment? How can we best make the use of this resource and create an event, or a series of events, which you would wish to be associated with?' "
No business, she acknowledges, is interested in putting money into something without a return. The events being supported could be anything from a children's workshop to two nights of theatre to a free chamber music series. "Garter Lane has to be more than just a building; it has to be about taking the arts and making them real."
The process Ms Senior talks about is already in train. A successful "business after hours" event, organised by Waterford Chamber of Commerce, was held in the centre a fortnight ago and that has opened new avenues of discussion with commercial interests.
Just three weeks in the job, she says she could not have arrived at Garter Lane, or indeed in Waterford, at a more exciting time.
"There is so much happening here now. People are saying that Waterford has been through the doldrums and now it's time for it to get up and make its mark, and I think that will really happen."
A former music teacher, she was previously based in Cork, where she was the project manager of the Association of Irish Choirs and also administrator of the Irish Youth Choir.
She would like to see Garter Lane expand its own involvement in classical music and opera, but stresses this would be done in partnership with the already well-established music societies in Waterford. Ms Senior does not know exactly what percentage of the community uses the centre, but she knows "it isn't high enough".
"I would say that, like any city, there are sections of the population here who have been disenfranchised artistically, and the onus falls on us to enfranchise them. It's up to the artistic organisations in Waterford to make people aware of what they're offering.
"I want to see as many people as possible enjoying events in Garter Lane. We need to be offering as wide a range of programmes as possible so that anybody could pick up our brochure and say `something here for me, in my price range and in my area of interest'."
A quick glance at the centre's programme in the weeks ahead shows it is not afraid to cast its net wide to bring in the audiences.
Sligo singer Tommy Fleming plays there on Saturday evening, and if you drop in a few hours before the show you can see an exhibition of prints by various French artists which is currently touring Europe.
Cork's Brown Penny Theatre Company will also be at the centre tomorrow and Friday with their production of Dermot Bolger's Lament for Arthur Cleary.
