‘WHEN THE sun is shining on the cobbles and the place is crowded, squint your eyes and you could almost be on the Ramblas in Barcelona,” says Stuart Bailie about Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter.
He is only half-joking about the appeal of this historic warren of streets which at various points in the past has been the stomping ground of sailors and prostitutes, punks and trade unionists, anarchists and outcasts.
It’s early on a drizzly Wednesday evening and while it’s proving difficult to visualise the bohemian idyll conjured up by the former NME journalist there is no denying that over the past 20 years this once neglected part of the city has been assuming a new identity as a vibrant cultural hub.
On any given weekend, the lane outside the Duke of York, where Gerry Adams once pulled pints and Snow Patrol played their first gig, is teeming with even more people than are crammed inside the pub. Around the corner is the John Hewitt, a prized literary watering hole.
The Undertones recorded Teenage Kicks in the next street; around the corner is the site of the infamous Harp Bar, frequented by the Official IRA, strippers and punks for a brief period in the dark 1970s. Early Cathedral Quarter pioneers such as the restaurant Nick's Warehouse and Todd Architects are still nearby.
Other streets are now home to galleries, photographic exhibition spaces and places buzzing with creative activity, even if they do rub shoulders with estate agents, accountants and kebab shops.
These days Bailie is chief executive of the five-year-old Oh Yeah centre based in a converted warehouse on Gordon Street beside the Belfast Community Circus School. The Oh Yeah centre is dedicated to “hothousing” upcoming local bands. Gary Lightbody from Snow Patrol is on the board of the charity.
“It took those guys 10 years to get famous, so the original idea was to provide an environment which would mean local bands didn’t have to wait that long,” says Bailie.
Here you’ll see music students and young bands such as Derry’s Wonder Villains hanging out or hard at work. The centre houses a recording studio, rehearsal spaces and a teenage collective called Volume Control which organises gigs for under-18s.
Local success story Duke Special has a songwriting room upstairs, while DJ Joe Lindsay takes charge at the Palookaville Club nights which Bailie describes as “riotous and under the radar”. He could be describing the Cathedral Quarter itself.
If the quarter has remained, for some, under the radar, the area’s visibility is about to be turned up several notches. After a January launch the doors to the Belfast Metropolitan Arts Centre (MAC), a purpose-built six-storey complex, will open in April.
The building will be home to two theatres, three art galleries, a dance studio, workshop and rehearsal spaces, offices for arts groups, as well as a resident artist and a bar.
“The MAC represents Europe in the centre of Belfast,” says MAC chief executive Anne McReynolds. “People are going to walk in and think they are in Helsinki.”
The publicly-funded centre is expected to bring 160,000 people a year into the area and host more than 1,000 events its the first 12 months. McReynolds is coy about the opening programme but says the first exhibition will feature work that has been delivered through a partnership with the Tate Gallery in London. She also mentions a “world-renowned artist, a household name, who has never exhibited in Ireland before”.
Across the square from the MAC is a restaurant called the 4th Wall which opened a few weeks ago. Art from local University of Ulster students graces the walls. Co-owner Paul Savage says the Cathedral Quarter “has that rustic atmosphere; it’s where people want to go”.
RIHANNA CERTAINLY made the most of her time here in the city's cultural quarter. A few minutes away on North Street a chip shop called The Chippie featured in the pop star's latest video We Found Love. (The chorus "We found love in a hopeless place" wasn't the best advertisement for the area but you can't have everything.)
“She danced on the tables and we fed her and the crew 75 fish suppers,” says owner Cathy Brennan, pointing at photographic evidence on the wall.
“That video was the start of seven weeks of madness in the city,” says Bailie. “Rihanna was here, then Belfast Music Week started and then MTV came in for the European Music Awards. It was surreal.
“Those were the kinds of days we looked forward to years ago, when we’re not this weird place that people shun. Eighty-thousand people arrived in town, the sun came out and we showed them the kind of weekend we couldn’t have done 10 years ago”.
I take a walk around with Seán Kelly, director of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival and Out to Lunch events. On Waring Street outside the stunning five star Merchant Hotel he recalls the “craziness” of hundreds of teenagers waiting for a glimpse of Justin Bieber during the recent MTV week.
This mix of upmarket venues such as the Merchant along with more bohemian haunts such as the Black Box on Hill Street, which Kelly helps run, form part of the mashed-up appeal of the area. The Black Box holds events as diverse as line dancing for pensioners and readings by punk poet John Cooper Clarke.
With continued funding for the popular Black Box in jeopardy, he explains why it is important to make sure all audiences are catered for in the quarter. “Originally the Black Box was a temporary venue established in the absence of a medium-sized theatre space in the city centre but it very quickly identified its own audience, an audience that may or may not be serviced by the new MAC,” he says.
“The Black Box is dark and a bit skuzzy and a bit left-of-field. The type of person attracted to it may not transfer to the MAC, which is an impressive shiny civic space.” His hope is the two venues can complement each other, creating “critical mass” for the area.
From a table in the John Hewitt, writer Martin Lynch, the man with the original vision for a cultural quarter – he ran these streets as a boy – reflects on developments in the area. “I think we’re a good 50 per cent of the way there.
“My concerns would be that the cultural content is still relatively small and there is no planning control. If 50 estate agents wanted to open up on this street now they could.”
He believes that only an independent Cathedral Quarter body, one not beholden to politicians or government, would ensure a vibrant future for the area.
While the Cathedral Quarter Steering Committee is extremely active, the kind of independent body envisaged by Lynch is not on the cards. And there are concerns, he says, over a new shopping mall planned for the stretch of road across from the John Hewitt, on the site of the burnt out North Street Arcade.
“Having said all that, the MAC is going to be fantastic, and I am still hopeful that one day we will be able to enjoy the kind of rich cultural quarter here that we go to other European cities to visit . . . the development has been uneven but we’re getting there”.
See Rihanna? A hopeful place.
