Composer Elaine Agnew is involved in an innovative arts project in the district of Ballymun in the north of Dublin city. Known as an area with a high proportion of social deprivation over the past thirty years, a major regeneration programme is now underway. As part of this, an art commissioning project, Breaking Ground, was launched in February 2002. Over the life of the regeneration programme, which is expected to continue until 2012, a wide and diverse range of art will unfold in Ballymun. The title is intended to portray the potential of art in all its forms to challenge preconceived perceptions and expectations. The project will provide an opening for art to be made in different contexts and with new publics with the aim of establishing Ballymun as a place of international standing within the arts community. Funding of some 800,000 has been allocated under the Irish Government's 'Per Cent for Art' scheme, which provides for a percentage of the total cost of any public project to be devoted to an appropriate arts component. Altogether there are thirty artists involved in Breaking Ground and a plethora of ideas and approaches, from fixed three-dimensional sculpture in the traditional sense to ephemeral cultural events and highly-structured training schemes. 'It is', as Aisling Prior, Breaking Ground's artistic director puts it, 'like an arts laboratory'.