Artists in the old Filmbase building, owned by the council, say it really needs some visible upkeep

The lights weren’t on inside the ground-floor exhibition space in the former Filmbase building, on Monday evening. The security desk was unmanned.

Open windows on the upper floors were some of the only hints to people strolling along Curved Street in Temple Bar that the council-owned centre was occupied.

Somebody had spray-painted a tag on one window. The corner of another was cracked.

On the western end of the ground-floor exhibition space, a few framed paintings were on display but with no clear indicators as to who had created them.

The eastern end of what is now called 2 Curved Street was far livelier.

One of its three occupants, the organisation Visual Artists Ireland, had decorated two of the glass panels with a large pink, yellow and black banner stating that “art is punk”, and a third with a text known as "The Visual Artists Bill of Rights".

But despite these efforts to vivify the ground floor, the place looks lifeless, tenants have complained to some councillors.

They say the building looks kind of derelict, Green Party Councillor Carolyn Moore told members of the South East Area Committee on Monday 13 July.

“I was contacted a couple of months ago by another arts organisation who was kinda saying, ‘Look, it’s disgraceful to see that building left derelict when so many organisations are looking for space’,” she said.

Moore had to explain that it’s almost fully tenanted, she said. “You just can’t tell that from the ground floor, and the optics of that in such a central spot in Temple Bar are really, really bad.”

By phone on Monday, Green Party Councillor and Visual Artists Ireland member Donna Cooney said that the ground floor was supposed to host a youth theatre. “That hasn’t worked out because some works are needed.”

That space needs to be animated, she said, “so it’s visibly used from the outside”.

The Temple Bar Cultural Trust, the council-owned company that manages the building, is working up plans to refurbish and upgrade the ageing building, a spokesperson for Dublin City Council said on Monday.

This project is linked to the Department of Culture’s Space to Create funding stream, they said, and the trust is waiting for finalisation of that funding and the related agreement.

Activate the space

The council's City Arts Office first sought to re-open the former Filmbase building as new artist workspaces in 2022, four years after it had closed, according to its Arts Plan for 2025 to 2029.

Together with projects at Artane Place and Merchant’s Quay, the Filmbase plans would contribute to the council’s goal of giving workspaces to 50 artists in 2024 and 2025, the plan says.

The council’s plans to create 20 new studio spaces in Merchant’s Quay are still progressing. Artane Place and Filmbase, renamed 2 Curved Street, have been delivered.

By February 2025, 2 Curved Street was occupied by three tenants – Visual Artists Ireland, Dublin Youth Theatre and Create – but its ground floor and basement weren’t yet in use, said John Foley, the council’s culture, recreation and economic services manager, at that month’s arts committee meeting. “Because there are significant works to do.”

At Monday's council meeting, Moore, the Green Party councillor, said she had met with one of the sitting tenants earlier that day, who also talked about significant works being needed.

They had noted a huge number of internal issues, and the fact that the building’s exterior looked derelict, Moore said, “It’s got street frontage on three sides – Curved Street, Eustace Street and Temple Lane – and frankly from all three angles, it looks really in rag order.”

For the tenants, any degree of activation of the ground floor would lend the feeling that the building has life in it, she said.

Could they use it for something? she said. “Whether it’s that we kinda keep exhibitions regularly in there, who would manage it, who would be responsible for booking it?"

Social Democrats Councillor Noelle Brown, a playwright and performer, said she knew it as Filmbase, as a box office for the Fringe festival, and as a spot where people went for auditions.

“And it has never had any love. And it’s a really busy place for the arts, and it needs to be looked at,” she said.

Difficult from day one

Independent Councillor Mannix Flynn, a board member of the Temple Bar Cultural Trust, said the building had been dilapidated when the trust took charge of it. “A lot of work has gone into that particular building.”

It was “extraordinary” that the tenants didn’t engage with him, as a board member or local councillor, he said.

Curve Street has been difficult since it was re-opened, he said. “The downstairs department, which is where the big windows are, we couldn’t get a tenant in to do that.”

All of the electric works have to be redone, he said. “The basement area has to be done. The works within the building are gonna cost in excess of one million odd euros.”

But the trust does everything in their power to make the building “fantastic", he said.

Moore said that on her tour of the building earlier that day, there were some “really quite shocking” issues. “From black mould to rising damp to supposedly accessible toilets that nobody using a mobility aid would be able to access.”

Could it just receive a bit of “extra love” in terms of cleaning and maintenance around the exterior? she asked.

Flynn said the building needs a huge amount of attention and the artists who inherited the spaces “understood that situation”. “And what is really galling to me is that those individuals within that building never wrote to me.”

By phone on Monday, Flynn said the Temple Bar Cultural Trust was equitable and transparent in the way they operated.

“For someone to insinuate, from an arts organisation, that we’re not pulling our job, and that the buildings are in a terrible state is bullshit. Bullshit,” he said.

No official in the chamber commented on the issue at the area committee meeting.

But a council spokesperson said on Monday that the trust's refurbishment plans should address a range of issues associated with the ageing building ahead of any more cultural tenants moving in.

A programme of works for the “first phase” of the project is ready to proceed, once the funding and "service level agreement" is finalised, they said.

The trust continues to maintain and manage all aspects of the building, and recently completed cleaning works to the frontage, entrance areas and glazing, they said.

“Significant fire and life-safety upgrade works have also been undertaken at the building in recent years,” they said.