Things To Do: Celebrate Culture Night, take the long road to Parnell Street, dance in Phibsboro Tower

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Finissage

During the summer, the Artists’ Studios in Henrietta Street celebrated their fiftieth anniversary with an exhibition of selected works by the various artists who had used these 18th-century rooms as a space to experiment and create.

Now, for Culture Night, the studios are closing off this chapter with Finissage, a contemporary group exhibition featuring works by the artists Louise Peat and Daniel McKeon. Opening at midday, the show reflects on the urgent need to protect affordable workspaces in the city.

But, if your Culture Night calendar is already jam-packed, this might be one to put on the slightly longer finger. While Finissage opens on Friday, it will run until Saturday, 26 September.

The Power Behind Ringsend

If you want to get out of the city centre for Culture Night, a good alternative might be to head over to the Ringsend and Irishtown Community Centre.

Codema, Dublin’s Energy Agency, is pairing up with the Ringsend and District Historical Society for a guided walking tour that shares local stories about the community and the changing role of energy and industry in the area.

The walking tour will start at the community centre, with local historians sharing their insights as they bring attendees around the various sites that are connected to Ringsend’s industrial development.

Visitors are welcome to head down to the community centre from 3:30pm for tea and coffee. The tour will take place between 4pm and 6pm.

Bohs Co-op Céilí

Maybe this Culture Night isn’t about being a spectator. Perhaps you want to be a more active participant.

From 4pm, the Bohemian Cooperative will be staging a few skill-sharing workshops at their offices up in Phibsboro Tower, including screen printing, bike repair, solar circuit building and adobe brick making.

Then, from 6:30pm, spoken-word poet Earth Man Bob will be presenting a live céilí with music from Róisín McGuill and Sean Collins. “Shite dancers [are] especially welcome,” according to the poster, and admission is free.

Any queries relating to accessibility can be sent to park@bohemians.ie.

Taking the Long Road

Chapters Bookstore will be celebrating Culture Night with the launch of Taking the Long Road, a brand new podcast which explores the harmful legacy of the 1963 Commission on Itinerancy Report, and its impact on the Traveller community.

Taking the Long Road is hosted by author, curator and activist Oein DeBhairduin, and to mark the occasion, he will be in conversation with the human-rights activist, cultural consultant and theatre maker Catherine Joyce.

Their talk will kick off at 6:30pm, and admission is free. But you ought to move fast on these, because there aren’t too many tickets left. You can secure yours here.

The R.A.G.E.

Down under Temple Bar, record and vintage video-game shop The R.A.G.E. is throwing a raucous Culture Night party with a stacked line-up of noiseniks.

Beginning at 8pm, the shop will be hosting sets from acclaimed producer Rory Sweeney, the feral art punk trio Mark & Luke, psychedelic multi-instrumentalist and member of krautrock quintet Pôt-pot Elaine Malone and jangle pop duo Postcard Versions.

Admission is free. But you’ll probably need to get down early, because the place tends to fill up very, very, very quickly.

Shapechangers: 1960s Irish Women Reflect on their Writing Lives

In 2021, Arlen House published Look! It’s a Woman Writer!: Irish Literary Feminisms, 1970-2020, an anthology of essays edited by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, which asked 21 writers who were born in mid-twentieth century Ireland to write about their literary lives.

Now, the publishing house is returning with a follow-up collection, Shapechangers: 1960s Irish Women Reflect on their Writing Lives. Edited by poet Nessa O’Mahony, the new collection brings together novelists, poets, playwrights, critics, filmmakers and writers who were born in the 1960s, and who similarly reflect on their motivations, challenges and successes as writers.

Among the contributors to Shapechangers are Niamh McManus, Eleanor Hooker, Emma Donoghue, Jane Clarke, Enda Wyley, Patricia Gibney and Deirdre Kinahan. And on Sunday, 20 September, this new collection will be officially launched in Books Upstairs by O’Mahony and some of the featured writers.

Readings will start at 2pm. Admission is free, but you’ll need to reserve a seat here.

The Thin Border

On Tuesday evening, The Whistleblower Cafe on South Anne Street will be launching The Thin Border, an essay by Alaa Alqaisi.

Published by Skein Press on the anniversary of the day Alqaisi fled Gaza, the essay reflects on the meaning of survival, the moral economy of a life spared, and the feeling of living in extra time.

Alqaisi will be in the cafe to speak on The Thin Border with writer, editor and founder of the online magazine ArabLit Marcia Lynx Qualey.

Signed copies of the limited-edition print run will be available for sale on the night.

The launch starts at 6:30pm. Admission is free. Tickets are available here.

Brazilian Film Festival

Next week, Solax Film Club will be staging its inaugural Brazilian film festival.

Curated and directed by filmmaker Ingrid Machado, the Brazilian Film Festival in Ireland is a five-day program that celebrates Brazil’s contemporary cinematic landscape, particularly focusing on female, indigenous, queer and Afro-Brazilian voices.

The festival kicks off on Monday, 21 September, at 6:30pm in the Stella Cinema, Rathmines, with a screening of the 2025 drama: Little Creatures. Directed by Anne Pinheiro Guimarães, the film is set in 1986, one year after the country has transitioned into a democracy. Its central character, Helena, has only just settled in the futuristic capital city Brasília with her family. When her husband leaves on a business trip, she is left feeling frustrated and lost in the city as she questions her life choices.

As of this afternoon, there were only eight tickets available for Little Creatures. Those are available here.

Then, on Thursday 24 September, the festival shifts over to the Dot Theatre on Pembroke Place. There, at 7:30pm, there is a screening of Sleep With Your Eyes Open, a 2024 drama directed by Nele Wohlatz which has an enticingly vague premise: “A coastal city in Brazil. Fu Ang, Kai and Xiao Xin rarely meet in this quiet comedy of misunderstandings. Yet during a hot, slow summer, delicate bonds grow between them like islands in a sea full of sharks.”

On Friday, 25 September, Rafaela Camelo’s 2025 film The Nature of Invisible Things, which chronicles the friendship that two young girls strike up in a hospital over one summer, will show in the Dot Theatre. Then, on Saturday, 26 September, the theatre will screen the 2024 film Malês, directed by Antônio Pitanga, and which follows a couple who, before they can marry, are kidnapped from their homeland in Africa and brought to Brazil as slaves.

Then, finally on Sunday, 27 September, the festival closes out with the 2019 comedy My Own Private Hell. Directed by Pedro Diogenes and Guto Parente, the film tells of Demimar, the owner of a dive bar, whose dreams of escaping to a distant land are offered up by fate when, one day, she falls in love with a sailor.

Tickets for the four films showing in the Dot Theatre are available here.

For more information on the Brazilian Film Festival in Ireland, visit their website here.

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Reframing Road Safety: a public lecture by Tom Flood

To celebrate EU mobility week, Tom Flood, Canadian communications expert and cycling advocate, will give a public lecture on "Reframing Road Safety" in the Trinity Business School on 22 September, followed by a Q&A. Tickets and more information here.

Unravel

On Thursday, 8 October mixed media artist Cath O’Sull will be showing her first solo exhibition at Reds Gallery.

Unravel deals with themes of identity, love, comfort, ritual and revelation with O’Sull’s figures wrapped, cloaked and sometimes feathered in states of figurative absence and transition.

The official opening reception will start at 6pm with Aebhric McGibney, director of public and international affairs at Dublin Chamber, appearing as the opening speaker.

Unravel will run until 14 October. For more information, visit O’Sull’s website here.

Join Balbriggan Sustainability Energy Community

Balbriggan Sustainability Energy Community CLG is developing community energy projects and membership gives you a say in how they develop and work.

If you are interested in sustainable energy and available grant supports then why not join Balbriggan SEC as a member? 

Sign up here.

Amenities in Santry

Tuath Housing is looking for applications from local social organisations to use new amenity spaces at two locations in Santry for delivering resident-focused activities such as education and training initiatives, health and wellbeing programmes, enterprise supports etcetera. More information here.