The Dublin Community Blog

If you are around Temple Bar on Sunday make sure to check out events at Meeting House Square where Dublin’s first Ukulele Festival takes place.

Along with the main Ukulele Hooley gigs, which will cost €15 to attend, there are musical workshops planned for Saturday 15th in the Odessa Club, an Open Mic session that same night in Shebeen Chic restaurant on Georges St.

Further details about the Hooley can be found here.

After the brilliant Street Performance Festival one week ago the next interesting festival in this year’s event calendar will start next week – the Temple Bar Circus Festival.

For four action-packed summer days Dublin’s Cultural Quarter will echo with peals of laughter and gasps of amazement as the streets and spaces spring to life, offering you the chance to experience a full and exciting spectrum of circus skills; from dazzling acrobatics and aerial shows, daring Chinese pole and contortion, to outdoor movies and musical mayhem!

An colourfull mixture of acrobatics, dance acts and even outdoor movies will be on display in Temple Bar from July 9th to July 12th – and the best thing about it is that’s everything for free! You will find the complete programme (PDF) here.

Every year, the month of June is packed with festivals and other events here in Dublin. At DublinBlog, we may not be able to be at everything, but we’d like to alert you to as many as we can and then ask YOU to give us feeback on your experience of these events.

This weekend sees the end of Trinity College’s first annual Shakespeare Festival, which has offered both free open-air (the way Shakespeare was meant to be performed!) and indoor ticketed performances, as well seminars and other related events. CLICK HERE to see the event calendar on Google. Read the rest of this entry »

Might be worth a look if you’re looking for something to do this weekend! Weather forecasts are looking good, and I’d love to have a poke around some of the tall ships along with the Le Aoife.

http://www.dublindocklands.ie/maritimefestival/

There’s an outdoor market, along with some street entertainment. Pat Liddy will be holding walking tours of the Docklands area over the weekend.

Next weekend, the Irish Film Institute in Temple Bar will be screening four state-of-the-art Anime/Manga movies in the course of the Japanese Anime Weekend, amongst others the brilliant “Ghost in the Shell 2″.

This event offers Irish audiences a rare chance to see four 21st-century anime movies on the big screen, where their artistry can be fully appreciated. The films are different in style, approach and content, but they represent a snapshot of the current state of this art form.

There will also be 2 supporting lectures to provide background to this cultural phenomenon, “A brief history of post-war Japanese animation” and “Japanese animation for adults” on Saturday and Sunday between screenings.

Seasons Greetings to one and all! This is just a quick post to let you know of a very rewarding alternative to bringing your kids/siblings/nieces/nephews etc to see Santy at the local shopping centre.

I spent the afternoon with three nephews at the DSPCA Cat and Dog home in Rathfarham where we met Santa, saw lots of cats, dogs, goats, geese and other animals who live at the shelter, had some cocoa and cookies and learnt a little about the DSPCA’s tireless work around the city and county.

Admission is very reasonable- €5 for adults and €12 for children (which includes the visit to santa, their cookies and a present). There are also free goody bags for pet owners with all manner of treats inside.  Most importantly, your money is going to a very, very worthy cause at the time of year when its resources are stretched to the absolute limit and literally every cent counts towards rescuing an abused or abandoned animal. 

Book online here for the last available dates- Sunday 14th, Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st December (or just make a donation!).

 

 

 

This weekend the new Analog Festival is taking place at the Grand Canal Square in Dublin’s Docklands, the chq building and the Sugar Club. One of the highlights is definitively the live-performance of Hal Willner’s Rogue’s Gallery, the line-up featuring sich illustrous names as Lou Reed, Tim Robbins (!) and Shane McGowan. That’s some nice pirate shanties to listen to…For myself, I am definetively looking forward to Saturday’s peformance of Danish Ambient/Electro-minimalists Elfterklang. Sunday’s programme will conclude with a free performance of “the real gypsy kings” Taraf De Haïdouks.

If you are more into visual arts, the Irish Museum of Modern Art has extended its opening times for the summer, now closing its doors at 8 PM – so there’s plenty of time to see the current exhibitions of Janaina Tschäpe and Miquel Barceló, for example.

I went to Custom Quay House last Sunday, in order to see what Dublin Urban Beach is all about. So, a plenty of sand, a few hundred people with a lot of kids, but all of them wearing anything but swim suites:).
Free entrance, free drinks, free food (ok, kidding about food&drinks).
Being a Romanian and having the hot Black Sea at about 200 km of Bucharest,  I must say that Dublin Urban Beach is like a joke for me. But hey, I really understand the action and right now I only want the sun to be more powerfull in Dublin.
And when I’m thinking that these days in Romania the average temperature is about 35 degrees Celsius……..
More pictures.

English Gents are the winners of Street Performance World Championships .

Take a look:

Taste of Dublin 2008 starts today, at Iveagh Gardens, near Stephen’s Green Park. So, if you’re hungry or you just want to hang around and see at work some well-known chefs, you definitely should take a walk in. Due to some work stuff, I will be able to taste the Taste only on Sunday, on the final day, but that’s fine, because on Monday you will find here some articles and pictures from the event.

Official site (25 euro fee entrance).