As Galway's arts festival opens, the city's long-expected cultural space inches slowly towards planning this year

Irish Times

2 days ago

Galway International Arts Festival
artistic director Paul Fahy described the city's arts infrastructure as 'an embarrassment', as
this year's two-week-long festival
opened, throwing into sharp relief the poverty of arts venues in a city with a reputation for artistic excellence.
Plans announced more than four years ago for a long-awaited civic arts space on an
An Post
city centre site, have inched forward slowly.
An Post is 'working through legalities with a preferred bidder', head of corporate communications Anna McHugh confirmed this week. 'We know how much everyone wants to see this development get under way.'
In March 2021 An Post
tendered
to redevelop a large brownfield site, including a former telephone exchange, sorting and storage offices behind Galway's existing GPO. It involved refurbishing the post office, creating a civic cultural space, plus retail and commercial units.
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Since 2019 An Post has generously allowed the festival to use the 640sq m former telephone exchange as a gallery, tucked behind the GPO, a city centre 'secret space' accessed via William Street. From the start, Mr Fahy says An Post has been 'hugely supportive', both locally and at head office.
The festival's two main city-centre visual arts venues have been in temporary, borrowed buildings for several years. A partnership with
University of Galway
has been key, with its venues on campus expected to host 54,000 at performances, exhibitions and talks this fortnight. But Fahy has said it's 'nothing short of shocking' that the city hasn't created a permanent performance and gallery space in nearly 50 years.
The planned cultural space at the GPO is 'one of several elements in a complex development project involving significant construction and refurbishment', said Ms McHugh. Originally it expected construction to be well advanced by now, but 'third-party matters and technicalities' impacted the timeline, 'frustrating for everyone'. The project is expected 'to progress to the planning stage by Q4 of this year'.
An Post again loaned the festival the space for a temporary gallery for its large-scale site-specific and provocative installation. This is Burning Down the House, built within the space by artist David Mach and the festival team: a life-size stone cottage with flames bursting out the windows. The festival's wider visual arts
programme
focuses on the climate crisis, environmental degradation, and human relationships with nature and each other.
Opening the exhibitions, Mr Fahy pointed out how 'dreadfully inadequate Galway is in terms of cultural infrastructure'. The multidisciplinary festival, a significant magnet for artists and visitors, has a line-up of theatre, circus, dance and opera. This year it has introduced several accessibility initiatives, and is also running a climate transition laboratory as part of a European project researching carbon footprints at large-scale events.
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The festival's 50th anniversary is in 2027. 'The first festival in 1978 had a very small tent and a converted shop, and here we are 48 years later with two extraordinarily big tents and a converted building. So, some things don't change. And exciting as it is to respond to a space and make things work,' Fahy says, gesturing to the imposing Mach installation, 'and that thrill will never go away, but it is an embarrassment' that the city lacks venue and gallery space, he says, to applause and cheers of agreement.
Catherine Connolly TD, who will declare for the presidential election this week, has said progress on the project was 'unacceptably slow', and that the new civic space would be 'transformational' for Galway.
The tents Mr Fahy mentioned are the large blue big top, now a festival staple on the city's skyline, hosting gigs for 3,000 standing, or 1,800 seated. This year a mini village has sprung up around Nimmo's Pier at the Claddagh, where international acrobatic and circus company NoFit State has pitched its own 700-seater bell-shaped performance tent, alongside several accommodation trucks for performers and crew, and a bar-café for audiences, for
Sabotage
, a spectacular show with live music.
The festival's skilled team first
transformed
the former telephone exchange, unused for 30 years, from dereliction into a gallery in 2019, costing the publicly funded festival more than €50,000. The large-scale sculptures and installations there since have consistently attracted huge audiences.
Ms McHugh said An Post remains 'fully committed to a world-class development of this very special site'.