By Conor Burke
The announcement just before Christmas that Galway’s art house cinema Palas is due to close comes as a significant blow to the city’s arts community. The company that runs Palas and operates the Lighthouse Cinema in Dublin has highlighted financial difficulties as the key reason for their decision to pull out. They also pointed to the oversaturation of commercial cinemas in Galway as another key factor.
This highlights a key flaw in the operation of such cultural institutions: Palas should never have been run on a competitive profit-driven model. It was built on the back of significant public funding and should always have been run as a publicly owned utility. Despite the controversies surrounding its development, which ran significantly over budget and took over nine years to complete, it simply cannot close its doors now. While Labour councillor Niall McNelis has suggested that the council itself lacks the expertise necessary to run such a public facility, the arts and film community in Galway would be more than equipped to operate it on a publicly owned basis if the state stepped up and put the funding supports in place.
Commercialisation and competition
Palas is different from other commercial cinemas. It was always supposed to be more orientated towards Galway’s film community as a hub for local film producers and festivals such as the annual film Fleadh. It was also supposed to highlight smaller independent art houses’ films; running it based on the market was always likely to lead to difficulties, and it highlights the necessity of why cultural institutions need to be run and supported by the state. In keeping with its original purpose other potential uses for the building would be to use it partially as an education centre linked to the local universities and PLC courses.
Galway has a reputation for being a creative hub within Ireland. This is largely down to the various cultural institutions and artists that make it possible. However, beneath this facade and the extremely hard work of local artists, performers, filmmakers, musicians, etc., there is a clinical lack of infrastructural investment and funding to support this community. While large-scale inner-city renewal projects are underway, it always feels as if consideration for the arts is an afterthought at best.
State must step in
For example, the Black Box Theatre (which also houses many artist studios) is set to be demolished to make way for much-needed housing. Still, the council or the property developers have not committed to including replacement arts infrastructure in the new development. Now, with the potential closure of Palas, this highlights the political establishment’s lack of vision and concern for the arts, whose primary motivation is always keeping private property developers in profit.
The Galway branch of the Socialist party, in conjunction with members of the local arts community, has called a protest to coincide with the first meeting of the Galway city council next Monday, 13 January, at 3 p.m. at City Hall. We call on all members of the arts community and the general public to come and voice their demands to keep the Palas Cinema open.
