DÚN LAOGHAIRERATHDOWN
From pre-schoolers to retirement groups, everybody is catered for in exciting projects, writes Alison Martin
DÚN LAOGHAIRERathdown is a broad church and the priority for those driving its Creative Ireland initiative is to make culture accessible to all – from those in the seaside village of Dalkey to newer areas like Ballyogan.
The Creative Ireland open meeting at the LexIcon Library on Wednesday, April 26 was a “great success”, according to Mairéad Owens, County Librarian, dlr LexIcon, with approximately 100 people in attendance.
“There are a lot of writers and artists living in the area so there is a huge passion and interest in arts in the area,” explains Owens. “The appetite and interest on the night was from a very literate and informed audience. Michael O’Reilly did a facilitation piece and a lot of people warmed to that.”
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown has a rich cultural tradition. Dalkey has become so synonymous with literary excellence that even its bookshops win international prizes: The Gutter Bookshop, which is on Railway Road, was named Independent Bookshop of the Year – UK & Ireland at the British Book Awards earlier this month.
Then there is the annual Dalkey Book Festival, which runs this year from June 15-18. To give a flavour of the village’s literary credentials, the festival website notes Dalkey as “the birthplace of George Bernard Shaw, schoolhouse of James Joyce and playground to Samuel Beckett and Flann O’Brien”. Past and current residents of Dún-Laoghaire Rathdown include Joseph O’Conor, Neil Jordan, Jim Sheridan, Sebastian Barry, Maeve Binchy and Ross O’Carroll-Kelly creator Paul Howard, who will be presenting his “Dalkey Orchive” at the Seafront Marquee on Sunday, June 18. Other guests at this year’s festival include US politician Bernie Sanders. As Owens remarks: “If you go down the road, you might bump into Anne Enright.”
With eponymous festivals and venues such as the Mill Theatre and dlr LexIcon, it is unsurprising that DLR has such a thriving artistic community. And Owens believes that the Creative Ireland strategy has the potential to “move down and out” into the wider community, to those who may not have the same access to culture in its broadest sense.
She says: “We’re looking at cultural activity in the broader sense, the quality of life stuff. It’s what we eat, it’s what we do in our leisure time, it’s what movies we go to see, as well as theatre, dance etc. We’re trying to come at it from a broad way.” And engaging with people from an early age. A key objective of Creative Ireland’s Pillar 1 is that by 2022, every child in the country will have access to tuition and participation in art, music, drama and coding.
DLR recognises the importance of lifelong learning and the positive impact that early intervention has to address education equality so with support from the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Childcare Committee, the Arts Office “has developed commissions that allow artists, early years’ children and educators time and space to research, develop and perform new artistic and interactive experiences for pre-school children”.
The project will be based in one of the community childcare settings in Ballyogan, ensuring that pre-schoolers have access to quality arts activity.
Owens continues: “The big thing now is to reach out to other groups in the area [DLR]; for example schools, Active Retirement groups and local history groups. That’s the next piece. The county plan is drafted for 2017 so now it’s a question of looking at the potential that Creative Ireland can help realise.”
As part of realising their objectives, Owens said a survey may be used to help further
gauge artistic engagement and identify areas for development.
“This year is about starting the dialogue, starting the engagement. It’s also about reaching out to the practitioners in the Mill Theatre and the Pavilion Theatre, and others. It’s about getting people to come together under the one umbrella and I think that has huge potential,” she says.
To honour the ethos of Creative Ireland, dlr LexIcon is incorporating the strands of the programme in everything they do this year. Projects include a touring ‘meet seat’ installation organised by DLR’s Architects Department. It will encourage people to sit down and have a chat as part of a thoughtful space programme.
There is also a summer party planned to encourage neighbours and communities to come together. Owens says: “Street Feast is happening on June 11 and it’s where communities come together and have a meal or a kind of a picnic so it is expected in the county that there will be around 60 feasts. Some of the IADT photography students are going to capture it on the day.”
In addition, the LexIcon also hosts the Municipal Gallery. There will also be a heritage summer programme. And for families, there promises to be plenty of free family events, including a teddy bears’ picnic in July.
In the midst of the programme, “there will also be a lot of developmental work about where we want to go in the next three to five years”, says Owens.
One of the existing success stories of community engagement at dlr LexIcon is Fáilte Isteach, a meet-andchat gathering of people from Europe, India and Asia and beyond, facilitated by volunteers.
Meanwhile, Susan Lynch, Senior Librarian: Reader Development and Outreach at Dún-Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council Libraries HQ, has been running a graphic novel project with the Southside Travellers Action Group (STAG). The idea came about following the success of the library’s
Demons in Disguise graphic novel project in 2015.
Lynch explains: “We have many members of the Travelling community who use our services in dlr libraries, but we had never worked with them as a group on such a specific project. We were also inspired by the ‘Days Long Gone’ replica trailer project created as part of Traveller Pride Week that visited dlr LexIcon in 2016.”
Key to the success of the project was the engagement with the artists and the enthusiasm of the participants. Lynch explains: “I engaged with local author and illustrator Alan Nolan, as we had worked with Alan on the Demons
in Disguise graphic novel. He has great rapport with young people and always engages well them on creating. I asked Natascha Fischell to come on board as she has worked for many years with STAG. Natascha is an artist and facilitator and as the Travelling community know her and trust her from her years of work with them, I thought she would help to make them feel really at ease in our space.”
A group of ten girls, aged 1013, took part in the project over ten weeks, accompanied by two youth leaders from the STAG Children’s and Young People’s programme.
Lynch says: “The youth leaders and children came in weekly each Thursday evening and worked for two hours on creating a story and illustrating their story. The result is a 30page graphic novel, which is colourful and fun and has been entirely created by the girls. It is called Prince: The Tail of Prince Charming and is about a dog that goes missing. The story includes Traveller Cant [language] as well as turns of phrase used by Travellers.” The book will be launched on Thursday, May 25 at 6pm in dlr LexIcon Studio Theatre.