Friday 23rd September

Seomra Spraoi is a collective which has come together to create a social centre space in Dublin. To find out more about the ideas behind the initiave see ‘Seomra Spraoi Initiative Aims to Create Radical Social Space’.

We are organising a big event on Friday the 23rd of September in the St. Nicholas of Myra community centre on Francis Street. The event will include films, workshops, exhibitions, free food, discussions, music, radio transmissions… and lots more things of interest, we are emailing you to ask you to join us and to bring whatever you feel could contribute to the evening or the project. As part of the evening we will be having an exploration / discussion into the question that was recently asked at the Dun Laoighre Festival of World Cultures — can art help change the world?

• Give Us Some Space: New Initiative to Create Dublin Social Centre is an indymedia feature that marked the begining of the project.
• Our website keeps update of minutes from meetings and links
• More musings on social centres in Ireland… is a bit more from darren who made a few films from visits he made to social centres around europe
• all previous events, minutes, discussions the social centre can be found here
• In ‘Something Maybe Beautiful’ written by Naomi Klein, the italian social centre network (150 + @ 2001) was described in the French newspaper ‘Le Monde’ as “the Italian cultural jewel”.

• Social centres are abandoned buildings — warehouses, factories, military forts, schools — that have been occupied by squatters and transformed into cultural and political hubs, explicitly free from both the market, and from state control. By some estimates there are 150 social centres in Italy.
  Critical discussion at Monk’s Garden, Venice

  This and further background can be found at Critical discussion at Monk’s Garden, Venice (commentry on and about the art world and in particular artist Sarah Pierce’s ‘Monk’s Garden’ project that is part of the Venice Bienelle, the “art olympics”)

• And as it happens theres a free street party the following day, Saturday the 24th.
• And on Sunday the 25th there is an open garden and play day in the community garden we were invovled with creating in Dolphin’s Barn.
• And if that’s not enough you can join the Dublin Greenway Cycle who will be stopping to have a picnic in the Phoenix Park.

So all in all it will be a fun filled and productive weekend of lively events, discussion, action, art, play. We hope you can make the journey up and join us, we should be able to sort you out with accomodation with our friends here in Dublin. Hopefully the Friday night will spark the wish to make the idea of a social centre a reality.

And do invite your friends and ask them to ask their friends.

a few art, media, eco, radio, activist links

Cork

• what if
• mayfield arts centre
• art encounter 2005
• where’s me culture?
• caucus cork
• green map cork
• one day collective

Kilkenny

• KAZ krew
• kilkenny vid heads
• mary butler, city arts officer

Belfast

• direct action against apathy
• the vacuum
• Bloomer and Keogh
• the lawrence street workshops

Dublin

• sarah pierce
• can art help change the world?
• framemakers
• indymedia ireland
• pallas heights
• CREATE
• AAI – architecture association of ireland

Galway

• macnas

Radio

• CMN (community media network)
• dublin south
• liber8 (dublin 8)
• NEARfm
• anna livia
• indymedia radio
• galway feminist pirate radio