Street Feast, Ireland’s biggest street party, is back on 24 and 25 May

Tables are lined around the room, adorned with cakes, fresh lemonade, breads, cheeses and all sorts of homemade goodies. 

Colourful bunting and joy-filled photographs decorate the rustic, bare stone walls of Fumbally Stables in Dublin 8.  

At one table, children take turns designing their own buns, with sprinkles and different colours of icing, as part of this launch event for 2025’s Street Feasts.

It is all just a hint at the vibrant, warm, welcoming Street Feasts that will be popping up all over the country on the 24 and 25 May.

“This started 15 years ago on our front driveway in Newtownmountkennedy, where we tried a street party and realised that it would be a really good thing to see if other people would do it too,” says Street Feast co-founder and CEO Sam Bishop.

That initial party in Wicklow has now grown to over 1,000 Street Feasts every year all across Ireland. 

Anyone can get involved in organising their own event, anywhere, says Bishop. Just register to get your free starter pack and you’re off.

The mission is to connect people, and “get people to realise that they have a lot more in common than they have differences”, Bishop says.

These days, he says, people are influenced towards pointing fingers and blaming others “for the way I feel, or the way I don’t have enough of something”.

Sharing food together, Bishop says, can help a person realise that the “other” actually has the same challenges, and potentially similar values. 

“But even if they’re not exactly the same values, generally, they’re a sound person,” he says. 

Street Feast OG

Iseult Coffey ran her first Street Feast in 2012, and has been involved most years since. It was a natural progression for her and her community in The Tenters, Dublin 8.

She had organised different community gatherings before, like informal Christmas Eve carol sessions on the green at Oscar Square. 

The reaction to that was really positive, so when she heard about Street Feast, it felt like the right fit, she said at Fumbally Stables on Wednesday.

The first year, they didn’t know what to expect, she says. She and some friends put out the invitation around the area, decorated the green and fired up some barbecues. 

The rest, she says, is history. “It got really massive some years. Like, festival territory. Especially around the Covid years,” Coffey says.

This year however, they are returning to a more laid-back, picnic affair. “Next year we might go more elaborate again,” she says.

Íde Ward remembers chatting with a woman at the Oscar Square Street Feast in 2022, who she had met only once or twice briefly before. 

The acquaintance mentioned she had a spare ticket to the Another Love Story music festival at Killyon Manor in Meath, and offered it.

“We ended up sharing a tent. I partied with her and her friends, who I hadn’t met, for the weekend. It all started from a chat at Street Feast,” Ward said at Fumbally Stables on Wednesday. 

New to the game

A newcomer to Street Feast is Mahevish Siddiqui. She moved to Dublin from India three years ago and is organising a new Street Feast at the front of the Dublin Mosque on South Circular Road, kicking off at 1pm on 24 May.

For her, it is an opportunity to celebrate with the whole of Dublin 8 and bring a diverse community together.

“I was involved in a community event in Dublin 8 recently and met Amanda from the Street Feast team, we got talking and I loved the idea. Next thing, we were collaborating on an event,” Siddiqui said by phone on Thursday.

Siddiqui says that while the food will be “potluck-style”, depending on what people bring, there will also be a barbecue on the go. “I’m looking forward to bringing everyone together, it will be a multicultural party,” she says.

A party becomes a career

For Amanda Jane Waite, Street Feast evolved from a party into a career.

When she first moved to Ireland from England in 1999, she lived in Rathgar. “The people were lovely, but it seemed everybody knew everyone already. Everyone went to school together. I just found it harder to connect,” Waite said at the Fumbally Stables on Wednesday.

However, when she and her family moved to The Tenters, Dublin 8, she found a new lease of life.

“There are so many different nationalities. I wasn’t the only one that was ‘new’. Everyone is starting out trying to build relationships. I made so many friends – 25 years later, we’re still here,” she says.

Waite organised her first Street Feast on Sandford Gardens after hearing Bishop talking about it on the radio. She says it sounded lovely, so she investigated more.

She had been working in communication for financial services, but was moved by the warmth of the messages she was receiving from Street Feast.

“I thought, I’d much rather write things like that than what the bonds markets were doing,” she says. “One day a job came up with them and I jumped at it.”

Waite now works as the Street Feast Community Support Officer, and continues to organise her own event on Sandford Gardens.

“This year we have a band playing, called Concrete Handbag. They’re all young people from the area. It’s going to be such great fun,” she says.

The creativity and freedom to make each Street Feast unique to each community is what attracts a lot of people, says Waite. Some people even have them at different times during the summer.

One Street Feast crew in Flanagan’s Field Community Garden, Dublin 8, are waiting until September, to coincide with harvest, Waite says. 

Street Feast and beyond

Bishop says it’s amazing what can come out of sharing a sandwich and a cup of tea with someone.

“We’ve found that men’s sheds and other groups and initiatives can come out of running a Street Feast,” he says.

Waite remembers how one chat with neighbours at her Street Feast in Sandford Garden’s eventually led to three “pocket parks” springing up around The Tenters area.

Some people were discussing how three local cherry blossom trees were sadly being cut down due to rot, and this inspired them to get together and petition the council for more trees and greenery.

“It all came about from one chat with neighbours that otherwise might not have happened if it weren’t for the gathering for Street Feast,” she says.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.