It’s a talking point and an ice-breaker. It’s a ubiquitous topic wherever you’re from and whatever your circumstances are. Discussing it even seems to have a certain cool cachet. That subject is space. Recently the spotlight has shifted to private rental space, where the emergency in the lack of accommodation prompted institutions such as as Trinity College Dublin to email their students and staff begging them to take in student lodgers if they had extra rooms in their homes. Similarly, the homelessness crisis, which saw the Irish Housing Network occupy The Bolt Hostel in July, has been at the top of the agenda and at the forefront of people’s minds.
People’s interest in space expanded and became part of collective consciousness during a period that saw the quick and irresistible dismantlement of some of Dublin’s cultural and community spaces such as Mabos, The Exchange, Supafast, and MART. A backlash and thousands of signatures on generally ignored petitions directed to Dublin City Council followed. Whilst those battles were lost, the result was that objectors and activists went away, regrouped, and have since thought more carefully and deeply about their next move.
One of the groups that has emerged out of that collective outcry is Connect The Dots, ‘an experimental interactive space that encourages dialogue on values and power of the urban ecosystem.’ They are not a space, but a collective of like-minded young urban philosophers with a desire to build bridges and create dialogue in an area where dialogue seems to have come to a stalemate.
Connect The Dots was founded by two grads of DIT’s MA in Design Practice, Naomi Murphy and Marisa Denker, to deal with the highly politicised issue of vacant space in Dublin. Naomi had been involved in the much-referenced Granby Park, a project run by voluntary arts collective Upstart, that saw the successful rehabilitation of an empty lot into a community space and garden. Marisa on the other hand had been involved with The Exchange, and had become interested in the ‘grassroots DIY movement that swept across the country’ during the recession, and how to turn Dublin’s derelict properties into innovative spaces. They describe themselves as wanting ‘to try and understand the landscape around the reuse of space’ through connecting the groundswell of support and outrage that had followed some significant closures.
‘There are so many people that care about Dublin – artists, arts initiatives, collectives, squatters, charities for homelessness, researchers, students, council members architects, city planners, and developers. We wanted to create a strong network that could be resilient to change and work to reimagine and grow our city together.’
Since then, Connect The Dots has set upon its mission of curating talks, discussions, screenings, and dinners (including a picnic at Bloom Fringe, and a pot-luck dinner in the Dublin Food Co-Op), where people can gather to discuss issues regarding community and its use and, importantly, bonds can be built between the various stakeholders in an informal setting. They touch on other subjects of urban planning and space, but mainly their focus continues to lie in the relationship between vacant space and community space in Dublin.
Over the past year Naomi and Marisa have had time to think long and hard about what has led to space becoming such a problem in Dublin: ‘It has to do with a lack of a clear process to access space, a low value placed on social initiatives, a lack of power within networks of people that want to create fairness, larger institutions developing in areas without consulting the users of the space, and often it boils down to the Irish anxiety of needing to own property leading to land-hoarding.’ Recently, they have been working on ‘In Transit’ with the Goethe Institut and Our Farm, an EU-wide project that sees cities join to figure out best approaches to modern urban space, which took place last month.
There is a high demand for space, matching the high supply, yet barriers and challenges blocking the reuse of spaces has caused what Connect The Dots call ‘artificial scarcity’. The space is there, but the system won’t let it be used. This is an argument Totally Dublin has heard many times before from the Irish Housing Network when they were interviewed about The Bolt Hostel, and again when it looked into derelict buildings a year ago. It is not that there is no space, it’s that the structural constraints won’t allow its use, whether that is NAMA, Dublin City Council, or landlords. They create the artificial scarcity, and the rest of us scramble to make it work.
Connect The Dots wants to create a space where the normally adversarial relationship between activists and institutions can be resolved in a space of debate and discussion. Their objectives for the near future see the increasing involvement of landlords for instance. ‘We have a very large overarching mantra – moving towards systems change,’ the girls say. ‘What this would entail will be dictated by the groups that come together and discuss what is feasible and what can be worked towards.’
As long as there are community hubs that don’t require a physical space to continue to think and work towards a healthier and more bipartisan approach to space, then there’s reason to stay involved and optimistic, and perhaps we can connect the dots to make the systems change.
The three biggest problems faced by creative and community space according to Connect The Dots:
1 – A lack of supportive and flexible infrastructure in terms of funding, advice, champions, transparent information, and clear processes to encourage the growth of new initiatives and current projects.
2 – Space not being valued as an important asset to the community. What’s come out of a lot of the discussions at Connect The Dots is that there are few ‘champions’ and little to no legislation that protects spaces that may not have direct fiscal benefits to the city, but do amazing work for the community and provide an important creative space for an area that would otherwise have none.
3 – The ad hoc nature of their set-ups often leaves creative spaces vulnerable to sudden changes or to authorities, thus making economic viability and resilience challenging.
Words: Roisin Agnew
Photos: Steve O’Connor
