Date: Mar 5, 2010
Subject: Arts centre team get overseas inspiration

CAMPAIGNERS pressing for the conversion of Dunfermline’s fire station into an arts centre are going global in their quest for inspiration.

Volunteer group Dunfermline Arts and Media (DAM) say they’re astonished to learn that there are scores of former fire stations around the world that are now art galleries or studios.

“I’ve always said that Dunfermline Fire Station looks as if it was built with conversion to an arts centre in mind,” said DAM co-founder Ian Moir. “Now it looks as if that’s true of fire stations in general.

“Most of them, like Dunfermline’s have large garage spaces that would lend themselves for use as exhibition spaces and small rooms that would be ideal for workshops and studios.”

DAM recently commissioned a £6500 study that looked at various options for the creation of a contemporary arts centre in Dunfermline. It has concluded that the fire station ¬ which will be vacated when the new one being built at Pitreavie is opened in the spring – is the No.1 choice
of those buildings looked at.

Now, it’s emerging that similar conclusions have been reached in towns and cities throughout the world – fire stations make great arts venues.

DAM point to three venues in particular: the Firestation Artists’ Studio in Dublin; the transformation of a fire station in London’s East End into the Acme Studios; and the Firestation, an arts and culture centre in Windsor.

The group also learned that in 1963 top artist Andy Warhol established a studio in an abandoned fire station in New York. It was here that he began work on two iconic pieces: a head of film star Elizabeth Taylor and a full-length portrait of Elvis Presley.

DAM saw the Dublin venue as particularly inspirational. A local community organisation that provides training for young people initially saw the vacant fire station as having ideal potential as a multi-use centre. Although that idea didn’t bear fruit, the Arts Council in Ireland secured a long-term lease on the building with a view to creating spaces for visual artists to work.

In Windsor, meanwhile, a fire station was transformed into an arts centre which was closed in 2007 because of inancial problems. However, it re-opened under new management the following year and has since been transformed into a major contemporary arts centre offering everything from music and comedy to the visual arts.

And in London, the Acme Studios have been supporting art and artists since 1972.
However, in 1997 a former fire station was bought with funding from the National Lottery and other sources, and the building has been restored and developed by Acme to provide units in which artists can live and work.

 Since making those discoveries, DAM has been on a mission to find other examples, in the hope that it will persuade the powers-that-be that converting the Fife Council-owned fire station in Carnegie Drive could be an attainable dream.

A surprisingly large number of these are in Australia. Mr Moir said he was particularly impressed by the Old Fire Station Community Arts Centre in Kiama, New South Wales; the Old Fire Station Gallery in Caboolture, Queensland; and the Glenelg Fine Art Gallery in South Australia. DAM’s researches have also uncovered several fire station arts conversions in Victoria state: the Capital, a performing arts centre housed in an old fire station in Bendigo; the Firestation Print Studio in Armadale; the Fire Station Cafe Gallery in Preston; and the Central Goldfields Art Gallery in Maryborough.

Perhaps not surprisingly, DAM also uncovered the existence of arts centres housed in fire stations throughout the United States: in Chicago; Fairhaven, Washington; in Maryburyport, Natuck and Framington, Massachusetts; Louiseville, Georgia; Richmond, Virginia; Palo Alto, California; and in both San Antonio and Forth Worth, Texas.

DAM has also found some in Auckland and Northland, New Zealand. And, closer to home, in Henley-on-Thames in England.

Three other English initiatives have also caught DAM’s eye: a neighbourhood campaign to covert a former fire station in Dorking, Surrey, into a not-for-profits arts centre; a petition opposing the demolition of a fire station in Sheffield and calling for the building to be coverted into an arts centre; and a call to carry out a similar conversion in Hadleigh, Essex.

As DAM continues to attract support for its proposals ¬ Dunfermline and West Fife MP has given his backing to them ¬ Mr Moir said he would now look more closely at the experience of some of the overseas venues in the hope of finding a way forward for the Dunfermline initiative.

“Clearly, there is a great deal to do if this idea was ever to get off the ground,” he said, “and part of our work will involve tapping into the experience of other venues. We need all the help we can get … even if it comes from the other side of the world.”