Three years ago they were dilapidated buildings that concealed a hive of creative endeavour, behind peeling paint and antiquated facilities.
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Even today it's possible to stand in one of the beautifully proportioned courtyards of Gorman House Arts Centre and have no sense of what's going on behind the many doors and windows of the precinct's eight heritage buildings.
But with a bit of government funding and a lot of vision, Gorman House and its sister organisation, the Ainslie Arts Centre up the road, have been reimagined as a thriving arts precinct in the heart of the city.
The buildings are now undergoing their first major refurbishments in decades, and director Joseph Falsone, with his newly appointed creative team, is gearing up to launch a major callout for arts opportunities.
Speaking to Fairfax Media in the freshly revamped central hall of the Ainslie music centre, Mr Falsone listed some of the new facilities that will be on offer at the centres.
These include Ainslie's refurbished 200-seat performance hall and the restored 70-seat Ralph Wilson Theatre at Gorman, as well as sound-insulated tuition pods, fully serviced work stations, artist studios, and meeting hubs across the two venues.
He said the new facilities would form a hub not just for artists and arts administrators but for the Canberra community.
When he first took on the job as director three years ago, there had been no direct funding for the centre as an arts organisation since 2001.
"Really the whole fabric of the building had been, for a couple of decades, just gradually deteriorating – no painting, really just sitting there," he said.
"We'd seen no major refurbishments or renovations since the '80s, and we had large areas of the building that [were] not able to be used even for the arts purposes that the 1980s renovations had aimed at."
He said the centre's vision was to provide a platform for artists to engage with each other and the community, and for visitors to experience the best of what Canberra had to offer in the arts.
"We know it's out there, we know it's in the air, but providing a venue where those people are at home and are respected and valued for what they do, it's not a veneer of cultural entertainment to drive a commercial or other agenda, it's actually saying this is a natural home for the arts," he said.
He said while the centre would need much more in the future than the ACT government's $2.5 million for capital works across the two centres, he was happy to have received an increase in arts funding over the next five years.
"It covers about 20 per cent of our operating expenses. For a major arts organisation, that's an extremely large proportion of our income that is generated through our own activities," he said.
"But that's not something we're lamenting, we see it as a partnership to work with government. Government alone can't make these places great."
As well as the arts call-out, the centres will also celebrate their relaunch with a party at Ainslie Arts Centre on July 10.
