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Starting to set up the latest PrettyvacanT Dublin exhibition PrettyvacanT Dublin

Column Here's why we turn empty properties into art spaces

“Raise the shutters on a vacant unit, and life returns to an area”: Arts initiative PrettyvacanT Dublin on bringing energy through art back to abandoned buildings.

IN 2009 I returned to live in my home town of Dublin. While I had been away, the landscape had changed.

All I could see was empty properties. Everywhere. Not just hidden down side streets and in darkened alleys, but across the city and in every suburb and street; thousands of empty offices, retail units, houses and apartments.

We all know the story: recession, foreclosures and bankruptcy leading to vacated premises, empty shops and vacant properties.

But I knew these properties still had great potential. And so whilst some saw them as a blight on the landscape and a visual reminder of Ireland’s financial woes, I saw an opportunity. As Hillary Clinton said, “Never waste a good crisis”.

So, using my background in visual arts, I set up PrettyvacanT Dublin, an arts initiative repurposing vacant properties as temporary exhibition spaces for artists.

The challenge is to make people think about the way vacant space is being under-used in Ireland

The aim of PrettyvacanT Dublin is to enliven Dublin’s empty buildings through painting, photography and installation, to bring art on to the high street, and to the public, in a more disarming and unexpected way. The challenge is to make people think about the way vacant space is being under-used in Ireland.

Raise the shutters on a vacant unit, and life returns to an area. Use art to make buildings more aesthetically appealing, and you demonstrate a property is fit for purpose. Create positive attention for a building otherwise ignored, and you advertise its availability to potential suitors.

Furthermore, provide artists with an alternative platform to display their work, and you give them a place to meet, exchange ideas, and hone their craft.

To date, despite not being in receipt of any funding, PrettyvacanT Dublin has grown over the last three years, and has organised 12 highly successful events across 10 locations, worked with over sixty individual artists and received thousands of visitors. We’ve transformed former supermarkets, repurposed disused travel agents’ shops, and reworked abandoned office.

Like a cross between The Wombles and The A-Team locked in a garage, we’ve recycled, reused and re-employed the materials we’ve found on the floor to help deliver our exhibitions. We’ve used leftover furniture, utilised shop fittings to hang artwork and even refitted existing wall panels to create gallery walls.

In keeping with the DIY ethos, we find our artists via social media. The digital space is the perfect place to cultivate relationships and research potential shows because it’s free. Twitter and Facebook allow us issue open calls, before launching a show into the real world.

Whilst there does not seem to be a national strategy to tackle the national issue of vacant properties in Ireland, arts collectives and arts organisations taking it upon themselves to lead the conversation and fuel the fire. And it’s working. Recently, PrettyvacanT Dublin was asked take the mic at a conference held by Dublin City Council on the use of vacant spaces in the city, evidencing an authority beginning to wake up to the potential of such schemes – incidentally ones which have are already successful in other cities around the world.

Of course, NAMA is the motherlode. If these properties were opened up to alternative cultural use it would be recognition of the potential in vacant spaces.

All of this isn’t meant to sound self-aggrandising, rather it’s to highlight that solutions never need be expensive, and that open and collaborative dialogue encourages people to think of new, and cheap, ways of addressing a problem. PrettyvacanT Dublin provides one such solution, but no doubt there are many more.

The take-out is this: think about every empty shop. Every office. Every house. Think about its potential.

What could happen there?

Louise Marlborough is Founder and Director of PrettyvacanT Dublin. More information on prettyvacantdublin.com Their current show ‘Shoot the Tiger’ is taking place at Unit 3, James Joyce Street, Dublin 1 until 31 March, open Tues – Sat, 12 -5pm.

Read: Ghost estates brought to book in post-Tiger exhibition>

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    Mute Whatever
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    Feb 6th 2020, 7:39 AM

    This is a fantastic initiative, well done

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    Mute Dave Barrett
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    Feb 6th 2020, 7:56 AM

    @Whatever: how is this good? Protected sex is way better than a kit. Is there not std clinics in place all ready. GP’s in place. Would it not be better to put that money to hire more people.

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    Mute Donncha Ó Coileáin
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    Feb 6th 2020, 8:07 AM

    @Dave Barrett: You can protect yourself all you want, but you can still get STIs. Even with 100% protection, you need to get tested.

    Home-testing kits offer a lot more value for money than hiring more people at the clinics. Though, more staff wouldn’t hurt either. Home-testing kits also offer the chance to be tested to those who, for seriously outdated reasons, think going to the STI clinic is something shameful and to be avoided at all costs.

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    Mute Dave Barrett
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    Feb 6th 2020, 8:32 AM

    @Donncha Ó Coileáin: whats shameful is getting a std in the first place.

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    Mute john doe
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    Feb 6th 2020, 8:55 AM

    @Dave Barrett: getting an sti is unfortunate but there is nothing shameful about sexuality or even promiscuity so long as all involved are willing and eager.

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    Mute Michael Burke
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    Feb 6th 2020, 9:19 AM

    @Dave Barrett: go back to your own century

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    Mute Bandit 600
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    Feb 6th 2020, 9:58 AM

    @Dave Barrett: exactly comments like yours the reason why many people wouldn’t go to their doctor or a clinic to get checked

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    Mute Davis Payne
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    Feb 6th 2020, 1:02 PM

    @Dave Barrett: what if your unfortunate enough to be the monogamous ONE in a relationship? You don’t know where you stand and clearly can’t trust your former partner (or partner if you’re the forgiving type) to be fully forth coming with facts?
    How has a person in that situation shamed themselves?

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    Mute Terry Cahill
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    Feb 7th 2020, 2:50 AM

    @Dave Barrett: Sorry…did you mean “what’s shameful IN getting “ ? Otherwise you are mentally defective.

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    Mute Ro-your-nan
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    Feb 6th 2020, 7:53 AM

    This initiative might sound ‘rash’ but it deserves ‘the clap’. I’ve been ‘itching’ to get one of these – bet there were still be a few ‘crabby’ comments made about this.

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    Mute John Mulligan
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    Feb 6th 2020, 6:19 AM

    A pox on all their houses!

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    Mute Justice Mickey
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    Feb 6th 2020, 7:30 AM

    @John Mulligan:
    No, it should be “a pox in all their houses”

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    Mute Mejo
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    Feb 6th 2020, 9:08 AM

    Welcome to our Weimar Republic!

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    Mute Davis Payne
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    Feb 6th 2020, 1:18 PM

    @Mejo: suspended twitter account eh? Says it all.
    I’m sure you’re Twitter wasn’t suspended for opened minded 21st century thinking.

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    Mute Mejo
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    Feb 6th 2020, 2:10 PM

    @Davis Payne: ‘it says it all’ would you like to elaborate Davis?

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    Mute Davis Payne
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    Feb 6th 2020, 12:58 PM

    A lot of people may be too embarrassed to go and get tested. If it helps a higher rate of detection that’s great.

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