Above: Glenmalure House in Wicklow. You need to cross a river in a car (if your beat up old jalopy can handle it…) to reach the place and it once played host to the likes of Yeats who wrote a poem about it. Tomás Lynch takes a look at the dwindling number of An Oige hostels throughout the country. On his rambles he stumbles across issues of privatisation, a fall … Read More
Reflections On Apollo.
As the Apollo Story progressed, most of the press attention focused on the artists, and a very small number of organisers. However, the real story of Apollo House is and always was the volunteers, over 700 of whom gave up their time to make it what it was. A stark reminder that the current housing system is broken beyond repair, and that a better world is possible. Tommy Gavin … Read More
Rave Against The Machine.
Photographer Matthew Smith’s Exist To Resist documents the history of activism and having it in the years before and after the infamous Criminal Justice Act of 1994. This was a cunning piece of legislation designed to wipe out rave culture in the UK. The project smashed through its initial ask on Kickstarter by doubling its target. This isn’t another huckster making dollar off memory- it’s a sharp reminder of what … Read More
Stop the Trams!
While Luas Cross City work continues apace in Dublin, there was a noticeable absence of Luas trams at times. The just settled industrial dispute between tram drivers and their employer grew proper bitter at times, yet as Donal Fallon finds it’s certainly not the first major strike involving Dublin’s tram drivers.
While much has changed in recent decades, some things haven’t – there was nothing new about some of the discourse around the recent Luas dispute, depicting workers as overfed and underworked.
If anything would surprise Dubliners of old about the current dispute, it is perhaps the fact there are tramlines at all. When the last Dublin United Tramways Company route closed in July 1949 (the No.8 to Dalkey, for any pub quiz aficionados) many believed they were waving goodbye to a form of public transport for ever.
In the Sunday Independent, one writer made it clear that “I am sorry for the demise of the trams, but as a motorist I just cannot weep for them. They had become an incorrigible block to modern traffic, holding always, as they did, the middle of the road…Yet, the trams are dead, and it is time for them to lie down.” By the 1940s, the tram seemed a relic of the past.
Revolution For Sale.
Souvenir Shop is one of the Arts Council’s major Easter 1916 commemorative projects. The shop is located in a ramshackle old Georgian house on North Great George’s St. Rita Duffy has filled the shop with subversive products inspired by the revolutionary 1916 period. Catriona Devery caught up with Rita to talk about the show.
The Reel Women Of 1916.
Shot in the style of the old news reels, this short film project aims to emphasis the role of women in 1916. With just days left on their Fund:it appeal, we caught up with comedian Elaine Gallagher to chat about the centenary year. Hi Elaine, so how’s the Fund:it campaign going? Fairly stressful? Hey, it’s going okay. It’s a full time job, constantly plugging the campaign and you start … Read More
#rabbleReels: Basque Bloody Sunday.
On Saturday 5 March to mark the 40th anniversary of the massacre of Basque workers a free public screening of the documentary ‘Massacre in Vitoria’ will be shown in the Pearse Centre, Dublin.
It’s Payback Time.
As Ireland goes to the polls we link the last ten days of Irish Independent coverage and an unprecedented front page in 1997 that made it all possible.
Tuam Babies.
When the case of the 796 Tuam babies became global news in Summer 2014, locals there found the then little-known burial ground of the former Mother and Baby home in the glare of the public eye. Adrienne Corless writes about the need to face difficult truths. A Commission of Investigation, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, aims to acknowledge and reveal what was once covered up in the entire country’s … Read More
Playing As If The World Mattered.
No doubt the world of corporate sport is rotten. Witness a corruption beleaguered FIFA and the processes of displacement that unwinds anytime a major occasion sets down anywhere from London to Rio. Yet things can be different. Turlough Kelly chats to Gabriel Kuhn who has uncovered a beautifully illustrated history of activism in sports going way back. The book is full of extraordinary and arresting images, many from the early … Read More