Okay, here we are … now, where's the entry? What's this whole B Block, C Block thing? Half the windows are blacked out, many of the doors are locked, and maybe I won't go up those dark, narrow stairs by myself today. Can someone please tell me what's going in this place?

It's amazing what a few decades can do to a place. Gorman House, a 1920s hostel for government workers, was reinvented in the 1980s as an arts centre - a sprawling warren of studios, rehearsal spaces, workshops and galleries, clustered around two elegant central courtyards which, in turn, became home to popular Saturday markets. But as Canberra has grown, so has the arts scene. There are now arts centres, both recently refurbished, in Belconnen and Tuggeranong, and a new precinct planned for Kingston. The Street Theatre is a growing hub of local performance art, and the Ainslie Arts Centre a focal point for Canberra's music community.

Canberra is now a city of "arts hubs", the term used by the ACT government to refer to areas or organisations that have the potential for developing a "critical mass" of creative activity. Gorman House, along with its sister organisation up the road, the Ainslie Arts Centre, has been identified as a potential "hub" needing development, and the 2013-14 ACT budget committed $1 million over two years to start work.

''Start'' being the operative word; very little has been done in the way of renovations, refurbishments or substantive repairs since the centre was redeveloped in the 1980s. But this hasn't stopped the people working inside the warren - director Joseph Falsone likens the place to a Tardis, Doctor Who-style - from doing their thing, be they writers and publishers, painters or glassblowers, photographers or choreographers, administrators or theatre directors. Over the years, however, the energy and sense of cohesion that may have once lightened the place has faded. Aside from the inevitable challenges of maintaining spaces for artists in a heritage-listed building, it's the ethos of the place, as much as its dilapidated physical fabric, that needs revamping. And while a new office, some new signs, a bit of landscaping and a coat of paint would be a good start, Falsone is just as excited about the potential of the arty little village that exists beyond the confusing hallways, dingy stairwells and blacked-out windows of Gorman House, which itself sits smack-bang in the middle of the city.

"You've got a whole village inside this place that hasn't been encouraged to or hasn't found the opportunities to work together," says Falsone.

"Partly that's because you've got organisations inevitably in the arts that have taken on a big and ambitious workload, resources are tight and people are focused on delivering their own programs and outcomes. I think the opportunity we've got at Gorman, and this capital works program is going to emphasise it and help facilitate it."

But make no mistake, he says - government funding, while both necessary and welcome, is only part of the solution. The biggest change in a place like Gorman House - a centre reliant on earned income, after all - has to come from within.

"I think wherever you've seen, historically, communities of artists that are interacting and challenging each other and having an open dialogue, you actually get better arts outcomes, and you actually have natural professional development opportunities for people to learn," he says. "That works at an arts management level as well. [We need] an internal community that actually says if you're an artist, if you're an arts professional, this is a supportive environment that's actually going to give you opportunities but also challenge you to question what you're doing and to innovate."

In other words, the onus will be more squarely on those producing their art to come out from behind their closed doors and prove -to each other and to the community - that what they're doing is worthwhile.

"When we look at our relationship with the broader community, it's not enough for an arts centre to close its doors, it's not enough of a justification," Falsone says.

"Even though, speaking from an arts perspective, we don't need to justify them beyond the fact that they are intrinsically important, however, we do live in a society where if we're going to put public resources into supporting the arts, we need to constantly be making a case, and we need to be engaged in an open conversation with the community and with government about why that is important."

The virtual realm is also just as important when it comes to making a place accessible. Falsone and his team are also working on a revamped website that will document what each of the 30-odd tenants are doing throughout the year, "so no one will be able to do anything there that's not made visible". The centre is also revamping its branding, and - fair's fair - rents, which haven't changed in decades, will go up.

The mood among the tenants seems to be one of wary optimism; the centre's multi-disciplinary nature could be seen as a positive force, rather than an obstacle, but a revamp is a revamp, after all.

But artsACT director David Whitney says it's important to be realistic about how far funding alone - especially the modest funding of the first stage of what is likely to be a multi-phase project - can take a place like Gorman House.

"It sounds very ambitious to have $1 million to spend at Gorman House, but the reality is that that probably just could give the whole place a coat of paint. So let's be a bit more strategic than that," he says.

To this end, artsACT commissioned a scoping study last year to be released this week and described as a "space audit and cultural planning exercise", to determine what needs to be done to turn Gorman House into an "arts hub". The process involved one-on-one consultations with tenants, as well as surrounding cultural institutions and businesses to find out where Gorman House fits into the scheme of Canberra's cultural life, and how to re-energise it back to its 1980s fervour. Philip Leeson Architects carried out the study alongside Susan Conroy Cultural Planner, and has prepared something of a blueprint for how the centre could look in years to come, peppered with images of vibrant arts centres throughout Australia and the rest of the world. Architect Alanna King, who works with the firm, admits that the issue of funding wasn't at the forefront of the study.

"The words that we used were 'blue sky' at what the opportunities were, given the heritage fabric, given the aspirations of various organisations - what was possible," she says.

"The scoping study wasn't necessarily tied to a particular time frame or a particular budget. It was about looking at what was possible, and so concurrent with that we were aware that there was some funding available but the scoping study wasn't necessarily a response to that funding."

But she says it was inspiring to go back to the plans for the works that were carried out on the centre in the 1980s, changes that took 10 years.

"Somebody at some stage had a big broad vision about making it an arts hub, and that took almost a decade to realise," she says.

"It's a once-in-a-generation opportunity to think about what Gorman House might be in the future."

Read more about the Gorman House Scoping Study on the ArtsACT website, www.arts.act.gov.au.