Things To Do: Question the constitution, listen to a hoover constantly running, debate the merits of autofiction

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

The Conditions of Being Here

Down in the Douglas Hyde gallery, there is a new group exhibition opening this evening.

Bringing together the work of members of the gallery’s 2026 Student Forum – students and recent graduates who engage with the Douglas Hyde and its programming – the new show, titled The Conditions of Being Here, reflects their exchange of ideas and perspectives throughout the year.

It features works by Rofaida Al Qaisi, Melek Biberoglu, Gillian Boardman, Deva Cervera, Ciara Davitt, Padraig Dennan, Aoife Dunne, Sarah Edwards, Sean Farrell, Jack Galligan, Alba Molina, Emma Murphy, Berenice Guerrero Pattugalan, James Wellwood, and Dylan Yearsley. The exhibition runs until Monday, 28 September.

A good time to drop down however, might be over lunch on Saturday, because artist Jack Galligan will be in the gallery to perform his work Everyone is Secretly Expecting That Something Beautiful Will Happen to Them.

Commencing at 1pm, during this durational performance, Galligan will be using his body to turn the gallery into a “site of tension, spectacle, and social encounter.” The piece unfolds as an improvised series of vignette-style poses backed by the constant running of a Henry Hoover.

For more information, visit the Douglas Hyde website here.

The Ethics of Autofiction with Lauren Oyler

In late January, at the launch of author Rob Doyle’s novel Cameo in Hodges Figgis, Lias Saoudi, the lead singer of the band Fat White Family, explained succinctly the rules of the literary genre autofiction.

It was simple enough, he said. “You just write down whatever happens to you. The uglier, the better. All you have to do is suss out how badly you want to destroy your life in the process. When you do fuck up, misgauge it, push it too far, well, the bit that lands you in hot water is fiction. The rest of it is auto.”

If debating the pros and cons of an ethically-challenged genre is your idea of a perfect Friday evening, then the Whistleblower on South Anne Street is probably the place to go.

Critic and Fake Accounts author Lauren Oyler will be upstairs to consider the boundaries between truth, invention and selfhood, and to examine the ethical questions that arise when a writer transforms their lived experience into literature.

The hour-long conversation will kick off at 6.30pm on Friday (25 September), and whereas the cost of defaming a friend or colleague in your forthcoming autofiction novella could be considerable, the price of this undoubtedly illuminating conversation will be free. You can reserve a seat here.

All About the Money

In July, the activist and heir to the Cox family, which owns the multi-billion dollar media company Cox Enterprises, James “Fergie” Chambers, was arrested in Ibiza.

The arrest was made on foot of an extradition request from the United States Department of Justice which has alleged that Chambers, a US citizen, transferred approximately $7.5 million from a US bank account to Tunisia in order to support Hamas.

Currently, Chambers is attempting to seek asylum while imprisoned in Madrid, and as of Wednesday, the Guardian reports, the Spanish government will allow the Trump administration’s extradition request to continue in their courts.

Coinciding with the case, the Irish Film Institute is holding its annual documentary festival, where filmmaker Sinéad O'Shea will be screening her film about Chambers: All About the Money.

O’Shea, who previously directed 2017’s A Mother Brings Her Son To Be Shot, Pray for Our Sinners (2022), and Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story (2024), followed Chambers over the course of two years as he created a communist revolutionary base in rural Massachusetts before relocating to Tunisia

All About the Money will be showing on Saturday, 26 September, at 5.40pm, and it will be followed by a conversation with O’Shea and A Thread of Violence author Mark O’Connell.

Tickets are available here.

Meanwhile, the IFI Documentary Festival 2026, which kicked off on Wednesday, will be running until Sunday evening (27 September). For a full breakdown of what else is on the bill, visit the IFI website here.

Dublin Festival of History

This Saturday, the Dublin Festival of History will be making its return.

Now in its fourteenth year, the annual free festival, organised by Dublin City Libraries in partnership with the Dublin City Council Culture Company, runs until 11 October.

On Saturday, Outhouse LGBTQ+ community centre over on Capel Street will be launching an exhibition which explores the life and legacy of Michael Dillon, writer, Buddhist monk, and first recorded transgender man to undergo gender-affirming surgery.

The exhibition weaves text, images, sound and videos to trace Dillon’s life, ideas and enduring influence as the author of 1946’s Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology, which argued that people should be able to receive medical treatment that would alter their bodies to match their internal sense of gender.

There will be an official launch reception for the exhibition at 1pm on Saturday. For more information on the centre’s opening hours, visit the exhibition page here.

On Thursday, 8 October, from 6.30pm, there will also be a special public conversation on Dillon’s life featuring Ruadhán Ó Criodáin, CEO of ShoutOut, in conversation with exhibition curator Francis Fay. Admission is free. But, there is a waiting list, which you can join here.

Among the other highlights over the next week are discussions on the 1926 census; a talk on how residents in the Tenters operated during World War Two, or the Emergency Years (Wednesday, 30 September); a deep-dive into the IFI and ESB’s film archives (30 September); and a lecture from Dublin City Historian in Residence for the Dublin North Central Area Elizabeth Kehoe on the archives of the Grangegorman asylum (Thursday, 1 October).

For more information, and to see what else is lined up over the course of the festival, visit its official website here.

Without Distinction of Sex

Out in Blanchardstown on Wednesday evening, the Draíocht arts centre will be launching a new large-scale work by leading theatre artist Veronica Coburn which examines Article 41 of Bunreacht na hÉireann, the Irish constitution.

Whereas the 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State promised its citizens liberty “without distinction of sex”, Bunreacht na hÉireann, ratified in July 1937, betrayed that promise. Article 41 reduced women to domestic and reproductive roles, Coburn says.

It erased unmarried individuals and members of the queer community in its assertion that the family was “the necessary basis of social order”, and Coburn says “legitimised a culture of exclusion and silence that has suffocated generations of Irish women”.

In Without Distinction of Sex, Coburn confronts the legacy of the article as it continues to shape the country today. Blending spoken text, choral song, dance by sean nós and contemporary dancer Sibéal Davitt, an original score by Sinéad Diskin and the voice of a virtual chorus of 41 women, Coburn’s new piece creates an “urgent theatrical reckoning with gender, power and the unfinished fight for equality”.

Without Distinction of Sex opens on Wednesday, 30 September at 8pm in the main auditorium, and will be running until 3 October.

Tickets are available here.

More information here

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Stoneybatter Book Swap

The monthly Stoneybatter book swap takes place this Saturday 26 September at An Síol on Manor Street from 11am-12:30pm.

You can expect a great range of books for all ages and the good news is that you do not need to bring a book to take part.

More information here.

Create your own Celtic artwork

On Sunday, 27 September, spend a few creative hours in the Pearse Centre bringing the beautiful designs of the Book of Kells to life with paint, colour and gold.

In this relaxing, hands-on workshop, you’ll choose a design from the manuscript, select your own colour palette and paper, and create your own piece of artwork to take home.

No previous experience is needed, and all materials are provided, with coffee, tea and delicious cake included.

Tickets are available here.

SINGSONG

This November, CoisCéim Dance Theatre will be premiering SINGSONG, a new performance by David Bolger in Project Arts Centre.

One body becomes many. A voice becomes a chorus. CoisCéim Dance Theatre's luminous new work finds poetry, wit and possibility in the company of others.

SINGSONG will open on 28 November. For more information, and to secure tickets, visit the event page here.

CoisCéim Broadreach x IMMA | Moving Signatures

Moving Signatures returns for a new series uniting slow looking art tours and movement workshops in response to works in IMMA’s new exhibition, Technologies of Peace.

Taking place over two months, and beginning on 3 October, the collaboration between CoisCéim and IMMA is designed for everyone to engage how they wish, with participants exploring empathy and perception, using their body as a means of thinking through how we understand and respond to the world around us while exploring the ideas and questions raised by the exhibition.

For more information, visit the CoisCéim website here.