Ms Una Mullally:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to contribute today. I am going to talk about the broader context regarding the development of local and community arts, specifically with regard to Dublin city, although a lot of the issues pertain to other cities and larger Irish towns. I have been writing about creative culture in Ireland for over 20 years and have observed many changes, positive and negative, with particular attention to emerging scenes, fringe culture, how local art scenes emerge and how community is built or dissipates at a local urban level.

We first have to conceive of the cultural activity and creative wellness of any area in Ireland as an ecosystem. In order to function, never mind flourish, that ecosystem requires affordable housing, studio and work space, a wide variety of performance venues, funding, local authorities that are flexible and engaged and facilitate creative activity rather than seeking to curtail it, and planning and leasing mechanisms that facilitate artists and creative collectives.

Unfortunately, in Dublin city, while at a superficial level there is of course creative activity, the vibrancy of hyper-local, local, underground, DIY and fringe creative activity and communities has come under the kind of pressure that, if we continue with the ecosystem framework, can be characterised as resulting in an endangered habitat. Without enriching the more nebulous, less commercial, less visible, more creatively risky, often embryonic arts scenes and the people who operate within them, the more mainstream creative activity they can evolve into enters into a stasis.

In recent years, particularly emerging from the recession, the uptick in commercial development that focused on chain high-street retail, office blocks, purpose-built student accommodation, hotels and aparthotels and other developments that add little to nothing to the arts and culture ecosystem squeezed out artists' studios and workspaces and in some cases literally demolished existing theatres and other cultural spaces. This coincided with a dramatic escalation in the cost of rent, meaning artists - typically lower earning - and people engaged in creative activity could no longer live in our city centres, which disconnects them from the site of their potential creativity, detracting from the creative liveliness of where we live. That hollowing out has not been replenished. In a healthy ecosystem there is a natural evolution, turnover and growth that happens organically. When parts of that ecosystem are broken to the degree that they have been, there is a collapse of authentic cultural activity, street life, character, variety and a resulting atmosphere of soullessness.

We are now at the point where we need several interventions to address this cultural decay. That includes new capital funding models including co-operative models for artists to own buildings and spaces, addressing the planning restrictions on street art, seizing on the abundance of vacant office space for cultural community use, investigating the potential of subsidised artist housing, legislation such as the public art Bill and lots more.

I am happy to answer questions about how retail and commercial vacancy can be utilised for artists, the decline of studio space in the city, positive examples of transforming vacant buildings to create artist communities that add to the capital's cultural infrastructure, and potential affordable artist housing models.