Since the summer of 2021, Unit 44 has been a beacon of creativity in Dublin. A former hair salon on Prussia Street, in Stoneybatter, run by the music collective Kirkos, it has frequently cropped up in the What’s Next For? series as a venue, community and events space, rehearsal room and vital node in the capital’s alternative-arts scene. From short-film screenings to contemporary classical performances, writing groups to indie-folk concerts, Unit 44 has enlivened its street, neighbourhood and city, hosting international and local artists of all disciplines.
Recently, Park Shopping Centre, which Unit 44 is on the outer fringe of, was sold to a developer. The new owner’s solicitors contacted Kirkos to say they needed to move out by March 2025. “Nobody has treated us unfairly, and in fact we feel lucky to have been given a reasonable notice period,” Sebastian Adams, the collective’s director, wrote this week.
“But the reality is that Unit 44 has filled glaring gaps in Dublin’s music and wider cultural scene, and it will be missed by many people. The fact that this space could only emerge in a place that was affordable specifically because it was ephemeral speaks to systemic problems regarding arts infrastructure and a lack of proactivity and engagement from funding bodies and city councils.”
Hundreds of artists have hosted events and performances at Unit 44, and audiences have come from far and wide. In total, about 275 public events – many free to attend – and more than 500 rehearsals have taken place there. The space has built and enhanced a wide network of creative communities while also operating as a studio space for working artists. It has shown how essential such small pieces of infrastructure are, and how something relatively inexpensive to run can have a hugely positive cultural impact. Unit 44 is also notable for often not charging artists to use the space (nor taking a percentage of any ticket income).
Adams says there are no funding streams dedicated to establishing or running spaces like Unit 44. The grants Kirkos applied for were aimed at funding a programme of work rather than a space itself. With permission, they used some funding for renting the space, and the results have been astonishing, already leaving a lasting impact on culture in the capital.
“Spaces which pay market rent and need to break even through hire costs alone cannot make themselves cheap enough for independent artists to use regularly. When renting a venue costs more than you can expect to raise in ticket sales, it becomes very difficult to make gigs happen,” he says. “For many artists, especially those working in niche genres, there is no way to make a sustainable career or even an artistic practice on that basis.”
An issue that professional artists repeatedly raise is the disconnect between Dublin’s vast amount of vacant commercial space and the approach of local authorities, funding bodies, developers and landlords: there is no cohesive, consistent system for matching arts collectives with space, despite more funding emerging.
“There’s a huge amount of money that has gone into the Space to Create programme,” Adams says. “I think it’s €9 million just in Dublin: €3 million from the Government, €3 million from local authorities and €3 million from philanthropy. All of that has been distributed through the council.”
When it was announced, this funding was earmarked for up to 60 artist workspaces, “which is incredibly bad value”, Adams says. “Putting some of that money into a grant that allowed you to run a space would be really useful.”
Dublin City Council’s development plan now requires big new developments to designate 5 per cent of their floor space for cultural, community and arts uses. But concerns are increasingly being raised that this is creating “shell and core” space, which is to say no more than breeze-block walls. That can leave artists facing insurmountable fit-out costs.
Adams says the key to Unit 44′s success is allowing artists and organisers to shape the space themselves. “We try not to curate who is putting on the gigs there,” he says. “We try to make it open to anybody. It’s not just about cost – because we give it away for free to most of the people who use it – but it’s also about trying not to put our own biases on who comes in. We had a lot of experience of being unable to access certain spaces when we were a younger group. We were all hoping what would happen was the people who didn’t have anywhere to do their events would come use our space. That is what has happened.
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“It’s a real mix,” Adams says of Unit 44′s programming. “There’s a lot of ambient music, a bit of folk, quite a lot of improvisation of different kinds. There’s the Frustrated Writers’ Group, FanVid – both very community-orientated, open events … We’ve had Palestinian solidarity events. Most of it really reflects the people who are around.”
What kind of space is Kirkos now on the hunt for? “The really special thing about Unit 44 is that it’s in an area with a lot of footfall and with street frontage. It made it visible. So that’s something we’re looking for now, a space where we won’t be restricted too much by noise, like having residents right on top of us, ideally with a few extra rooms we can use for artist studios. The space we have is very small: we don’t need that much.”
Adams is determined to make a new incarnation happen. “We have money to put into rent. There’s a lot of stuff out there, notwithstanding all these problems. But I do think it will be a lot harder for other people to start something like we’ve started. I might be wrong to be optimistic, but I’m an optimistic person.”
