Solstice Arts Centre director, Belinda Quirke.

Inspire interview: Belinda Quirke on the Solstice Arts Centre's first decade

John Donohoe

Published: Tue 31 Oct 2017, 10:01 AM

Last updated: Tue 31 Oct 2017, 10:07 AM

It’s a busy day in the Solstice Arts Centre in Navan. Children are arriving with parents and grandparents for rehearsals for a Class Act Stage School show in the theatre. Upstairs, in the gallery, a recent exhibition by three artists is coming down to make way for another show of work opening this week.
This is a week which is going to be even busier – Just after travel writer Manchán Magan opens ‘The Otherworld Hall’ exhibition on Thursday night, Friday sees a major gala concert marking the 10 years of the Solstice Arts Centre.
On Thursday last, when we arrived at the centre, director Belinda Quirke was glad to get a break from organising the event, and over a cup of coffee from the buzzing cafe in the centre, looked forward to the concert, and back over her decade overseeing the county’s first purpose-built arts centre.
“I knew very little about the place before I made the trip up from Cork for the interview,” she says. “There was very little on the internet about it.
“But when I got here and saw the scale and promise of it, and how interesting and new it was, I knew I wanted to work with it.”
A native of Bective, Belinda knew the town from her school days in Mercy Convent, Navan, before she spent 17 years studying and working in Cork.
“During those school years in Navan, there was nowhere you could go to see a play, a gig or visit a gallery,” she recalls. “You always had to travel. Now, something was happening to change that in Meath.”
Many people involved in the arts had left Meath, as there wasn’t any great facilities in the county for them. Now, she was delighted to be returning to her home county to help make a difference.
Having studied music at UCC and visual arts at Crawford College, she had been general manager of an arts centre in the southern city.
And before she worked on making a connection between the Solstice and the people of Meath, she first of all had to reconnect with her home county herself.
If truth be told, the Solstice is over 10 years in operation, but that first year was spent getting its feet.
Belinda knew there was a huge pool of talent in the town and county, with a tradition of drama and musical societies, producing people like West End star Killian Donnelly and others.
“I sat down with people over a cup of coffee or tea to exchange ideas, and make connections.”
It wasn’t always a fast process in a rural county as local artists weren’t always living around still, and only made connections as the profile of the centre increased.
“They might be back visiting home or parents at weekend and hear about us,” she says.
“Of course, the first year, like any other business, had to be about practical stuff too, set-up concerns, financial concerns, audience concerns.”
It was about listening to people too, to see what they wanted the centre to be.
“We listened to the performing groups and the feedback from audiences. From what they thought of the tea in the café to what they’d like to see on in the centre!”
And the space itself is “amazing”.
“It is the best space in Ireland,” Belinda says. “There is an excellent visual arts space, theatre space, and foyer space.”
And with space like that, anything that Belinda and the team at Solstice does has to be ambitious, she points out. From excellent local productions, to bringing the best national work to the centre.
And she is quite proud of projects that originated at the centre that went on to further national and international audiences, like work from Deirdre Kinihan’s Tall Tales theatre company, the Michael Farrell exhibition, the glass show featuring Deirdre Rogers and Paula Stokes, that went to Seattle, and the Francis Ledwidge exhibition currently showing in Derry, which is to travel to the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris next year.
“We are delighted to have been in a position to support art and artists and projects that have travelled globally.”
And the informal use of the café by groups meeting up brings great life around the place, be it for anything from chats to Spanish conversation groups.
Highlights for Belinda include the staging of the Gate Theatre’s production of Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’.
“It was so exciting to see Michael Colgan and the Gate bus pull in,” she says.
The premiere of the Glenn Close movie, ‘Albert Nobbs’, for which Brian Byrne provided the score, as well as the opening of Deirdre Kinihan’s play ‘Moment’ were other high points.
“Not everything is going to sell out,” she says. “But where there are small audiences, they are always very appreciative and knowledgeable audiences, like for jazz performances. We often get emails back from performers commenting on the audience feedback.”
Friday night’s anniversary concert will feature a host of homegrown talent, including Brian Byrne, Andrew Gavin, Sarah Brady, Padraic Rowan, William Byrne, Oisin Leech, Sara Mai, Megan Pottinger, Julieanne Forrest, Jimmy Smith, Julianstown Youth Orchestra members, and Fergus Sheil leading the RTE Concert Orchestra.
There will be contributions from writers Deirdre Kinihan, Peter Fallon, Gerard Smyth, Peter Fallon, and poet Tom French and musician Danny Diamond will perform part of their collaborative commission, ‘What to Bring When We Leave’, produced by Belinda, which will be going on tour in 2018.
Belinda acknowledges the role of Meath County Council in its financial support, saying that the theatre is healthily generating its own funding in addition to that. The Arts Council and the Department of Arts and Culture also help out, and a new addition to the offering next year will be a surround sound cinema, which the department has helped fund.
“We plan to offer an independent cinema programme, which will add greatly to the existing theatre, children’s, and visual arts programmes,” she says, looking forward to the Solstice shining brightly for a long time to come.