From Slack Spaces to Creative Cities

Presented by The National Sculpture Factory for ArtTrail

Artists and creative practitioners have a rich hist ory of co-opting  ‘slack spaces’, vacant, unused commercial units, to realise art projects, create ‘pop-up’ galleries and to establish studio spaces. Now City Councils, landlords, Estate agents and Universities are also embracing these opportunities in the post-Celtic Tiger recession era to develop new working strategies for the use, reuse and new use of these inner-city spaces.

 
Over the last 6 months a City-planner at Limerick City Council has set up ‘Creative Limerick – Connect to the grid’, as an experimental structural model that supports and houses ‘creatives’ into these ‘Slack Spaces’.
 
This talk will introduce the instigator, Lise-Ann Sheahan, to talk about what led to such an
imaginative strategy by Limerick City Council; Marilyn Lennon, who initiated the Spiritstore, the discursive art cafe, which ran voluntarily in a dis-used bar in Limerick for 2 months in August + September 2009; followed by a presentation by curator, Annette Moloney on recent examples of successful slack space usage around Ireland. 
This will be followed by an open forum debate on the potential future for Slack Spaces in Cork. 

Invited Guest Speakers:
 Lise-Ann Sheahan (Planner & architect, Initiator of Creative Limerick, Limerick City Council)
www.limerickcity.ie/Press/NewInitiativeLaunchedtoPromoteLimericksCreativeIndustryGraduates/
 Marilyn Lennon (Lecturer LSAD & Organiser of Spiritstore)
  http://spiritstorelimerick.blogspot.com/
Annette Moloney (Curator)

For further information contact:
National Sculpture Factory,  Albert Rd, Cork City.
dobz@nationalsculpturefactory.com
www.nationalsculpturefactory.com
00 353 (0)21 4314353
00 353 (0)87 934 2911