Things To Do: Go on a Lavender Walk, grapple with AI and the arts, blare some Gaelic jungle music

Our Picks

Our recommendations – no sponsored content, or adverts, just stuff we like.

Explore AI

Tomorrow, in the Douglas Hyde Gallery, the ADAPT Research Centre will be staging ExploreAI, an interactive exhibition which will explore the intersection of artificial intelligence, art and creativity, as well as its implications for artistic expression.

Featuring pop-up talks and interactive exhibits on ADAPT’s AI research, the event will look at how AI is transforming music and the visual arts, as well as exploring the tools and techniques that are set to shape the next generation of creative endeavors.

The event begins at 4pm, and will run through until 8pm.

Tickets are available here.

"Ruh Roh" by Rory Sweeney

Back in May, producer Rory Sweeney dropped the first single, "Entrance Place", from his forthcoming album, Old Earth, the follow-up to his sprawling debut Trash Catalogue.

Drawing influence from folk tales, fairy folklore and acts like Lankum, "Entrance Place" marked a notable departure from Sweeney’s prior body of work, which shifts between an array of genres like breakbeat, jungle and grime.

Now, on "Ruh Roh", his second single from the upcoming album, Sweeney bridges the gap between his new direction and his more dance-heavy sound, by pairing up with DJ and Club Comfort co-founder Roo Honeychild and reggaeton pioneer Ushmush.

It’s an exhilarating, stripped back track, part-dancehall, part-jungle, and propelled by Ushmush and Honeychild rapping as Gaeigle.

"Ruh Roh" is out tomorrow (Friday, 26 September), while Old Earth will be released on 24 October, and both will be streaming on Sweeney’s Bandcamp page here.

Dissolutions ‘25

Over the weekend, the experimental film platform Aemi will be hosting its second edition of the Dissolutions film festival at The Complex.

From Friday, 26 to Sunday 28 September, the festival will be screening work by almost 40 Irish and international filmmakers and includes works both contemporary and historical.

Curated by Alice Quinn Banville, Clodagh Assata Boyce, Diaa Lagan and Oona Mosna of Media City Film Festival, the festival will open with the Irish premiere of Kamal Aljafari’s A Fidai Film, an exploration and reclamation of the photos and films contained in the Palestine Research Centre’s archives in Beirut, which were seized by the Israeli Defence Forces in 1982.

On Sunday, the festival will also be showing Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s “impressionistic survey of the Irish immigrant experience", On a Paving Stone Mounted, featuring contributions from Stephen Rea, Gabriel Byrne, Mannix Flynn and Christy Moore. O’Sullivan and other key contributors will be joined by film critic Ruairí McCann to discuss the film after the screening.

Alongside workshops and discussions spread across the three day event, there will be screenings of works by Basma al-Sharif, Shari Frilot, Peter Tscherkassy, Mary Helena Clark and Paul Sharits.

For more information and to get a ticket, visit Aemi’s website here.

Sasha Debevec-McKenney and Gustav Parker Hibbett

It might be nice to unwind on Sunday afternoon over in Books Upstairs where poet Sasha Debevec-McKenny will be dropping by to discuss her new book: Joy Is My Middle Name.

Published back in July by Fitzcarraldo Editions, Joy Is My Middle Name is Debevec-McKenny’s debut collection, and “documents crawling through your twenties and emerging into your thirties” by looking at sex, race, womanhood, addiction, sobriety, consumerism and pop culture.

She will be in Books Upstairs at 2pm, and shall be in conversation with poet Gustav Parker Hibbett, the author of High Jump as Icarus Story.

Entry is free, but booking is essential and can be done here.

Intersectionality in Art & Climate

Since May, Pallas Projects/Studios has been hosting Entangled Life, an eight-month project devoted to exploring the connections between climate, society and the ecosystems where art and community intertwine.

Curated by artist and creator of the Wild Cabbage Project, Cristina Nicotra, Entangled Life has and will be engaging with climate-related issues through talks, workshops and exhibitions. And next up on the docket this Wednesday is a panel discussion about intersectionality in art and climate.

Featuring artists Basil Al-Rawi, Tara Carroll and Léann Herlihy, alongside Vanessa Conroy of the Feminist Communities for Climate Justice and National Women’s Council, the four will look at how the climate crisis is entangled with existing social, economic and political inequalities. As well as this, they will explore how creative practices and collective action can act as a catalyst for awareness and resilience.

The event will begin at 6pm on Wednesday, 1 October with some mint tea and an informal talk, before the panel discussion starts 15 minutes later. Book your seats here.

Tonie Walsh tour

This October is the 50th anniversary of the foundation of Ireland’s first LGBTQ community centre at 46 Parnell Square West by the Irish Gay Rights Movement.

To celebrate that milestone, and as part of the Dublin Festival of History, activist, journalist, historian and DJ Tonie Walsh will be holding his latest Lavender Walk devoted to sites of social resistance.

Sharing the stories of the people who risked everything in order to create spaces for meeting, organising and agitating, Walsh will, over the course of the tour, bring audiences to visit pivotal sites, including Parnell Square, OutHouse on Capel Street, the former Hirschfeld Centre in Temple Bar, and the IGRM’s second location at North Lotts.

Sites of Social Resistance will be held on Thursday, 2 October at 11am, and Friday, 3 October at 2pm. Tickets are available here.

Advert

Want to support our community journalism? You can get tote bags, t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, and more at our shop, and each purchase helps us keep finding, reporting, and writing local news.

Learn more

Noticeboard

Listings of events submitted by readers – you can submit yours for next week's newsletter, via this form.

Push for Palestine: Irish Coast to Coast Wheelchair Push

Sam Casey, a member of Balbriggan’s SCÉAL collective, will be fundraising to benefit Medical Aid for Palestine by embarking on a solo push from Sligo to Dublin.

After reaching Kilcock, Kildare yesterday, today, Thursday, 25 September, marks the 8th day of his push, which he is doing in solidarity with disabled and displaced Palestinians.

You can follow his journey here on Instagram, or donate to his GoFundMe page here.

New Irish Language Festival for Families in Fingal 

This week, Fingal Libraries is teaming up with Gaeilge365 to host Bronntanas, a new festival celebrating the possibilities the Irish language creates for families.

Including Bodhrán workshops, a panto, traditional art and artificial intelligence workshops and an interactive mystery game, Irish will take centre stage at this vibrant celebration in libraries across Swords, Baldoyle, Blanchardstown, Donabate, Malahide, Rush and Balbriggan.

The festival will run on Friday, 26 and Saturday, 27 September.

For more information, visit the Bronntanas site here.

Book series documenting Fingal's political history

Fingal Local Studies & Archives has launched the first volume of a landmark six-part series that explores over 200 years of political history in north County Dublin.

Politics and Democracy in Fingal, 1924–39, written by Dr. Declan Brady examines and recounts the story of the struggle after Irish independence to build and consolidate the new Irish Free State, and the attempts by local politicians in Fingal to maintain their political independence and influence.

The book will be available free of charge in Fingal Library branches and in eBook format on Borrowbox.

In Transit – an exhibition by Maria Ginnity

Dublin-based artist Maria Ginnity will be holding a solo exhibition at Reds Gallery.

In this series, Ginnity turns the daily ritual of commuting into a quiet theatre of human behaviour, capturing the awkwardness of intimate proximity with strangers.

Launching on Thursday, 9 October with TU Dublin’s Brian Fay appearing as the opening speaker, the exhibition will run until Wednesday, 15 October.

For more information, visit Ginnity’s website here.