• Share on Facebook
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Linkedin
  • Share by email
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Linkedin
  • Share by email

Presenting the arts in historic buildings has always been a challenge. Pauline Ross, looks at the development and future of The Playhouse in Derry.

Back in the bleak midwinter of 1991, I was shown the then St Joseph and St Mary Primary School buildings as a possible location for my proposed city centre community arts project in Derry, Northern Ireland. This complex of buildings and spaces, with gushing water streaming down the inside as well as the outside, was long since silent from the chaos and mayhem created by hundreds of school children chasing the all important three Rs from classroom to classroom. Instantly, I saw scenes of a different kind involving another ?R?, art.

Almost overwhelmed, my heart rate quickened as I entered for the first time the canteen and staff room on the ground floor (perfect for our Contemporary Art Gallery), then the first-floor assembly hall, carved up into three classrooms, with a make-do stage built entirely on old oak school desks ? now our 200-seat black box theatre. At a gallop up ten flights of stairs, I ran to the building?s crowning glory: the top floor with its glass partitions and six rainbow-coloured smaller classrooms ? our magnificent dance studio with views out over the historic city of Derry.

A new resource

In these two old buildings that had been lying empty for many years, I found the perfect home for Derry?s Playhouse. This was to be an arts centre that was located on a neutral site within a divided city and that would serve all the creative needs of the communities of our city and its hinterland. It would be a space resource: offering a theatre, dance studio, gallery, rehearsal rooms and meeting rooms. It would have a resource centre: gathering industrial, non-toxic waste materials for recycling, turning waste things into creative play things, making art that doesn?t cost the earth! And it would be a human resource, where community and statutory providers could access artists for their various community-development and social-inclusion projects. For a city emerging from the dark days of the Northern Irish ?Troubles?, it would play its part in the regeneration of a city centre historically recognised as one of Europe?s unemployment black spots. Finally, in the realms of peace and reconciliation, the many genres and disciplines of the arts would be used as tools for understanding, empathy and healing. Here dialogue, discussion and debate could take place in a safe, creative environment away from politics, politicians, dogma and ideologies.

Reconstruction

Previously costed for demolition, new blood and energy brought these old tired buildings back to life again. We have patched the roof, cleaned the gutters, bricked up windows, and opened up walls. We have done everything and anything that would assist our buildings in helping us create an efficient, effective, meaningful community-arts centre, resilient to the winds of change in an ever-changing arts environment.

Now the time is ripe for us as an organisation and The Playhouse as a building to be fully restored. The restoration of our communities lies in the restoration of the creative arts at its heart. And that?s where the BBC?s Restoration programme comes in. The Playhouse will feature as one of 21 buildings (and the only arts organisation in the whole competition!) to take part in the new series of Restoration, to be broadcast on BBC2 this July and August.

Each programme will focus on three endangered properties in one area, then offer viewers the chance to vote for the building they would most like to see restored. The regional winners will go forward to the Live Final, a spectacular celebration of the nation?s heritage, and the moment when one property is voted as the most worthy of Restoration.

TV?s Restoration can help us towards a greater sense of restoration. After over 30 years of cultural conflict on our doorsteps and in our backyards, restorative justice for our tired, beautiful buildings that survived city centre bombings is well and truly deserved. We at The Playhouse believe that fate took a hand when, at the turn of the 20th century, an acclaimed local architect was commissioned to design these beautiful buildings, that would later become The Playhouse. His name was Mr Toye!

Pauline Ross is Artistic Director of Derry Playhouse. w: http://www.derryplayhouse.co.uk or http://www.bbc.co.uk/restoration