Tonight: Our Culture Night picks for union members
by James Redmond
Culture Night takes place on Friday 18 September, with hundreds of free events happening across the country. We’ve picked out some that should be of particular interest to trade union members - from Ireland’s industrial and working-class history to housing, migration, climate change, community activism and a few things you might never have thought you were interested in until somebody persuaded you through the door.
Our top picks
1. There Is No Planet B: A Walking Tour of the IFSC in a Time of Climate Breakdown
Dublin | 5pm–7pm
Financial Justice Ireland have organised this walking tour exploring Dublin’s IFSC hinterlands and the connections between finance, the economy and the climate crisis. The tour begins at the James Connolly Memorial outside Liberty Hall, making it a fitting starting point for a trade union audience.
Expect a heady mix that joins the dots between global finance, fossil-fuel investment, data-centre expansion, housing and ecological breakdown, while exploring what a genuinely just transition could look like. There’ll be speakers from Unite, Christian Aid Ireland, Comhlámh, Friends of the Earth Ireland and CATU, alongside artists and campaigners.
And Dundalk’s Seán McKenna will be along to light a fire in your soul with a few ballad serenades and songs of struggle along the way.
The National Archives is turning the clock back a century to mark 100 years since the 1926 Census - a remarkable snapshot of an Ireland still finding its feet as an independent state. Behind the names and addresses is a country of workers, families and communities, with the census opening a window onto what people did for a living and the conditions in which everyday life unfolded.
For trade union members, it’s a chance to put a century of change under the microscope and ask just how far we’ve come in work, housing and living standards - and where some struggles might feel surprisingly familiar.
You’ll also get behind the scenes with the National Archives’ conservators, who are Fórsa members, and discover the painstaking work involved in keeping the original records alive for another hundred years.
3. The Power Behind Ringsend A Walk Through Ringsend’s Industrial History
Ringsend, Dublin | 4pm–6pm
Take a walk through Ringsend and discover the industrial history that helped shape one of Dublin’s best-known working-class communities. Codema – Dublin’s Energy Agency and the Ringsend and District Historical Society have joined forces for a guided tour exploring the people, industries and places that made Ringsend what it is today, and the close relationship between work, energy and community.
Local historians will chart the area’s changing industrial landscape, the challenges and opportunities it brought, and the community that grew up alongside it. For trade union members, it’s a chance to get beneath the surface of a part of Dublin where employment and industry have left a deep mark.
The tour starts at Ringsend and Irishtown Community Centre, with tea and coffee available from 3.30pm before setting off.
4. Bittersweet: The Rise & Fall of Carlow Sugar Factory
Carlow | 5pm–6pm
For generations, the Carlow Sugar Factory was one of the town’s major employers, and every year “the campaign” - the intense beet-processing season - brought the factory to life, drawing growers from across the region and becoming part of the annual rhythm of Carlow itself.
The factory was important not just to the town’s industrial identity, but to the ambitions of a newly independent state seeking to build its own industries and economic future. Its closure brought that era to an end, leaving behind memories of the jobs, friendships and communities that had grown up around it.
Bittersweet, Marc-Ivan O’Gorman’s impressionistic radio documentary, tells the story of the factory’s rise and fall through the voices of those who knew it, woven together with music and atmosphere. For Culture Night, former employees, beet growers and the wider community are invited to gather, share their own memories and hear excerpts from the documentary.
5. Still Not Safe: Life in Gaza during the ‘ceasefire’
Cork | 6pm onwards
Cork City Library marks itself out, once again, as more or less the central cultural force around which the whole city operates, with a frankly massive array of events taking place there tonight. There’s everything from rap to Rory Gallagher workshops to catch, but our pick of the lot is a free documentary screening.
Trócaire’s new short documentary, Still Not Safe: Life in Gaza during the ‘ceasefire’, follows Mahmoud, Yasmin and other people in Gaza as they try to hold onto hope and dignity amid extraordinary circumstances. Rather than talking about Gaza at a distance, the film centres the voices and everyday experiences of people living there. An educational stand opens in the foyer from 6pm, with the documentary screening in the Main Library at 7.30pm.
And look if that doesn’t take your fancy, you can head outside for the return of Rock the Block. Fresh from its outing in June, the Carnegie Courtyard will be taken over from 7.15pm by the Kabin Crew and a rake of simply far too talented Cork smallies ready to kick start your weekend.
The Great Debate sees Galway’s Red Bird Youth Collective take a satirical swing at the weird and wonderful world of electoral politics, with three entirely fictional parties battling it out for the public vote.
Expect campaign speeches, grand promises, political posturing, public debates and election drama as the young performers become candidates for the Pangea Party, Green Party and Other Party - each complete with its own political agenda, visual identity and campaign aesthetic.
The live political satire is the culmination of a year-long project in which the collective has built an entire political world through sculpture, costume and performance, poking fun at the spectacle of election campaigns while exploring bigger questions around democracy, media and identity.
And this isn’t a spectator sport. Audience members can question the candidates, challenge their promises and ultimately cast their votes in a mock election.
7. Echoes in the Courtyard: 140 Years in One of Ireland’s Earliest Social Homes
Dublin | 4pm–4.45pm
Tuath Housing and DCC have created an exhibition exploring the history of Ellis Court, hosted by the National Museum of Ireland at Collins Barracks. Ellis Court located on Benburb Street, is one of Ireland’s earliest social-housing developments. Through 140 years of history, it offers a glimpse into the lives of the people who lived there and the changing face of housing in Dublin.
With housing affordability and access to secure homes remaining major concerns for working people, the history has plenty of relevance today. If you can’t make it down, new dedicated Instagram and Facebook accounts for the project will share additional stories, photographs and archival material uncovered during the research.
Take a walk through more than 300 years of Black history in Dublin on a unique guided tour created by design historian, researcher and anti-racism activist Jess Majekodunmi. And if that time span surprises you, that’s partly the point: black people were living and working in Dublin throughout the 1700s, while one estimate suggests that between 2,000 and 3,000 Black people may have lived in Ireland over the course of the 18th century. Dublin was, after all, the second city of the British Empire - a Hibernian metropolis connected to a much wider world.
The tour brings to life people, communities and experiences often missing from traditional accounts of Irish history, challenging the comfortable idea that a racially diverse Dublin is an entirely recent development. For trade union members, it’s also a chance to think differently about who has lived and worked in the capital over the centuries - and how much more complicated the story of Dublin has always been than we sometimes imagine.
9. The Bohemian Cooperatives Presents: Culture Is Cooperation
Phibsborough, Dublin | 4pm - 8pm
As the old lady Dalymount enters her final days before the wrecking ball moves in for the new development, Bohs are welcoming visitors to the Spark Lab for an evening of cooperation, practical skills, music and community, exploring what can happen when people come together to make and organise things for themselves.
For a trade union audience, there’s plenty to get stuck into: an evening looking at how cooperative approaches can put workers, people and communities at the centre of economic and social life, rather than leaving everything to markets and large private interests.
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