Meet the Ballymena lady who’s brought a great big MAC of culture to Belfast!

It is the MAC - the multi-million pound Metropolitan Arts Centre - which aims to select, create and mix up music, theatre, dance and art, and, make each of those mediums accessible to all.

The person charged with ensuring that objective is realised to the full is its Chief Executive, Ballymena native, Anne McReynolds.

Anne said the concept and the building required to house it had been many years in development.

“I was first involved in talking about creating the Mac in May, 1996,” said Anne who, at that time, had just been appointed the Director of the Old Museum Arts Centre.

“It really is ridiculously difficult to bring everything together - the design, the electrics, the engineering...as anyone who has built a house will know, it just goes on and on”.

Some 16 years after that initial chat and everything came together very nicely for the MAC’s opening on April 20 and in the month since, up until May 20, a staggering 34,552 people have walked through its doors.

Just as staggering is what they discover inside - two theatres, three art galleries, one dance studio, three education and workshop rooms, four offices for resident arts groups, one cafe and bar, and one artist-in-residence studio.

Anne pointed out that the centre gives the public free access to “world class art” seven days a week.

Indeed, the MAC encourages individuals, families, groups and communities to experience its fabulous facilities and exciting exhibitions courtesy of free admission to its galleries, Monday to Sunday, from 10am. For those who take advantage, the opening programme includes a unique exhibition bringing together the artwork of William Conor and LS Lowry: ‘A People Observed’; sculptures by Maria McKinney: ‘Somewhere but here, another other place’; Nicholas Keogh’s new film: ‘A Removals Job’; and the superb No Title (Table and Four Chairs)’ creation of renowned American artist Robert Therrien.

Anne said it had been a huge achievement to secure the L.S. Lowry paintings which are being shown for the first time in Northern Ireland at the MAC.

“To be able to secure such priceless pieces of art shows that we are what we have been saying - World Class,” she said.

“To be able to do this you need to meet all sorts of criteria and we can do that because our systems and operations in the MAC are of such a high standard. - There are no other contemporary galleries in Ireland with the design specification of the Mac,” she said.

The six-storey building was designed by Belfast-based firm Hackett Hall McKnight, which won the UK-wide Young Architect of the Year Award in 2008.

Created at a cost of £18m, Stormont’s Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) contributed £11m towards the project, while the Arts Council of Northern Ireland invested some £5m in the building.

“They had a vision,” said Anne. “This is a resource for the people of Northern Ireland paid for largely by public money which allows for free public access. If the politicians hadn’t funded it we wouldn’t have the MAC”.

A prime example of “If you build it, they will come”, the MAC may be but Anne says even she has been surprised by the reaction of visitors.

“The feedback has been unbelieveably positive. I have to say that I truly didn’t expect the remarkable tsunami of praise that we have experienced,” she smiled.

In her new role, Anne admits to working all the hours God sends and clearly loves every minute of it.

Prior to her current “dream job”, she was the Director of the Old Museum Arts Centre.

She also held positions with the Belfast Festival at Queen’s and Belfast Community Circus and was one of the co-founders of the Belfast Children’s Festival.

Anne is currently a Trustee of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland and a member of the Cathedral Quarter Trust. She has also been appointed by the UK Minister of State for Culture as a Trustee of The Theatres Trust, an Independent Advisory Body charged with protecting and preserving theatres throughout the UK.

Educated locally at St Louis Grammar School and St MacNissi’s College, Garron Tower, and then Queen’s University, Belfast, Anne is the daughter of one of Ballymena’s best known publicans and shopkeepers, Tommy McReynolds and his wife, the late Eileen McReynolds.

She now lives in Belfast with her husband, the writer and director Terry Loane, and their four children, Tom (14), Joe (12) and twins Ellen and Jude (7) but is a regular returner home to visit family and, by her own admission, hit the shops.

Keen to give her fellow Ballymena folk a sneak preview of what’s coming up later in the year at the MAC, Anne revealed exclusively to The Times that a musical version of Oliver Jeffers’ beloved children’s book, ‘The Incredible Book Eating Boy’ is scheduled as the 2012 Christmas Show and will be co-produced by the MAC and Cahoots Theatre Company.

The event, which will be a world first for the MAC, will also feature after-show workshops at which the children can make their own books and eat them!