Staying connected, now more than ever

Tours and public programming at 14 Henrietta Street have been suspended to help protect the health and wellbeing of staff, patrons and visitors. All events due to take place at Richmond Barracks have similarly been suspended. These building closures have now been extended to May 10th in line with the most recent Government advice.

While centrally focused on the health and wellbeing of people and communities and monitoring the evolving situation closely, however, we are still progressing a number of programmes and plans to ensure our work is still connecting with the people of Dublin.

As we adapt and respond to this new normal we have:

• Started to run virtual Culture Clubs. Our regular series of hosted talks and tours of Dublin’s cultural places are now happening online. Throughout April and May these virtual Culture Clubs will be running twice a week. We are programming a series of talks, exhibitions and events that can be experienced online from the comfort of your own home and then we are hosting a group chat following the experience via Zoom. You can find our more about our programme and book a virtual Culture Club here.

• Our talks programmes, Mondays at the Mess at Richmond Barracks and Tea Time Talks at 14 Henrietta Street have also moved online. We have made all of our talks available to listen to online here. We are also working hard to create a series of new online talks. The first talk due to go live at the end of April will be a talk about researching history at home by social historian Donal Fallon. Keep an eye on our social media for news on that and other talks in the series.
  
  
• Now more than ever we are heading to books to pass the time. With this in mind, we are fast-tracking the launch of Our City Our Books, a website and programme that collects recommended reads and shares book suggestions by people who live in Dublin. If you are looking for some book inspiration or would like to add your recommendations to our virtual bookshelf you can take part here.

• As part of a re-imagined The National Neighbourhood, we are contacting community groups across the city to keep people connected through culture and conversation during this strange time. Under the title #CultureConnects, we will facilitate 8-12 weekly online sessions with groups, connecting with artists, other groups and creative spaces, in collaboration with National Culture Institutions. These weekly creative explorations (using online platforms to adhere to social distancing while ensuring social solidarity) will be a mixture of talks, discussions, webinars and hangouts; where people will have the opportunity to discover, learn, share and reflect - ideally with a cup of tea in hand! If you know a group who might be interested in connecting in this way, please contact Linda at experiment@dublincitycouncilculturecompany.ie

• We suspended our planned Your Tenement Memories sessions at 14 Henrietta Street. Instead we are setting up some remote sessions with interested communities. We are also working on ways to bring a ‘mobile museum’ experience to groups who have expressed an interest and will provide more information as plans are confirmed.
  

• We moved all scheduled Richmond Barracks Taster Classes in dance, singing, painting and poetry-writing to virtual online classes. These have now concluded and we are talking to the artists to re-imagine these into the future.
  
  
• We are continuing to add cultural people, groups and organisations to our Cultural Audit and Map. The Culture Near You website is live and will be better than ever at giving cultural choices to Dublin residents and visitors when we are able to come together again. You can add yourself to the map here.

We hope to be fully back in action as soon as public health guidelines say we can, but until then we will continue to do all that we can to make sure we stay connected.

Until then stay safe and stay home.