Friday View 20/5
Marina Park is the place to be this weekend and how do you get the traffic lights to change? It's our weekly round-up of news and events in the Friday View.
Change happens. But how?
A tweet about the short amount of time allocated to pedestrians crossing from Wilton Shopping Centre to Cork University Hospital got me thinking about something Councillor Lorna Bogue said when I interviewed her last year.
Firstly, yes, it’s pretty ridiculous that the crossing time is not longer. The priority you could say is to keep the vehicle traffic flowing. But, how do you get the information /frustration about something like this to the people in a position to investigate and make changes, because not everyone is tuned into Twitter.
Cue Cllr Bogue’s “beta unit” idea. She referenced the idea for a unit within the city council that would test and trial new ideas. And while a beta unit does very much sound like a tech solution, there is merit to it. A division such as the beta unit could also be the direct point of contact for people in Cork to suggest ideas and improvements in the areas where they live.
There’s also a sense of frustration evident in the tweets such as the one about the CUH crossing because, yes, it’s a hot topic for a moment, and yes other people share the frustration, and yes perhaps a councillor responds on Twitter, but then the internet moves on and what’s changed? Were the people who can effect change made aware? Who knows?
-JJ
News in brief
New €1.8 million fire station for Kanturk
Kanturk’s new fire station was officially opened last week during the visit of Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh O’Brien. The 340m² new facility on Percival St has now replaced the 70-year-old station at St Theresa’s.
There are no changes to staffing following the move; Kanturk Fire Station has a staff of 10 retained fire-fighters from the locality. They attend an average of 130 incidents each year, serving an area of North Cork with a population of 15,000.
Lido for the Lee? And then there were three. The Irish Examiner reports that three sites have been identified for the possible location of an outdoor swimming pool (or lide) in the River Lee. Those sites, all downstream of City Hall are Kennedy Quay, Horgan’s Quay and the Marina Park. Interestingly, Tramore Valley Park was also considered, but upstream, where the old baths were located, was ruled out to “avoid possible conflict with plans for the behind-schedule Lower Lee Flood Relief Scheme which will involve the construction of levees (artificially-raised river banks) to prevent flooding.” Our long read about the lido in Cork is here.
Trees please: An Taoiseach Micháel Martin will be in the city on Sunday May 22, to officially open Marina Park. As the City Council press release announced when phase two of the Park is finished Marina Park will be six times larger than Fitzgerald’s Park and as big as Dublin Zoo (couldn’t resist the Dublin comparison!) The second phase of the development of Marina Park will centre on a “regional eco park” running from the Atlantic Pond to Blackrock pier.
While at the Park tomorrow the Taoiseach will plant a wild cherry tree (Prunus avium if you’re wondering what type) and students from St Michael’s primary school will be setting plants too. Trees are definitely a welcome addition to the park. Indeed we would love to read the tree plan for the park. Hopefully that is something we can talk about when we finally get to meet the City Council’s Trees Officer whom we are waiting patiently to interview for Tripe+Drisheen.
Out + About
🌸 Gardeners and volunteers from Togher Community Garden will be hard at it in the garden this Saturday, busing sowing and planting as part of their Saturday Sowers program. From 12 pm they’ll be joined by Catriona Twomey of Cork's Penny Dinner's who will plant a Tree of Hope in the garden with songs from High Hope's choir. All welcome. More information here.
Time, date, place: 10 am, Saturday May 21, Togher Community Garden, Clashduv Road
⛪️ Cork Decorative & Fine Arts Society meets this weekend at Christ the King Church in Turners Cross with a guided tour of the church by Dr Tom Spalding. The church was designed by American architect Barry Byrne, but he never set foot in the distinctly modernist building he helped create. More information about the talk here.
Time, date, place: 11:30 am, Saturday May 21, Christ the King Church, Turners Cross
📸 Ukraine: The Cost of Freedom: a photography exhibition opened this weekend on North Main Street and runs through the end of the month. The press images which document Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are from Ukrainska Pravda, the country's largest news website.
Time, date, place: May 18-30, St Peter's North Main Street
🖼 Visions of Cork which opens (and closes) this weekend features work by five young Cork artists: Rosa Makela, Sarah Malito, Maeve Towey, Alice Moloney and Emer Kiely. Emer, you might recall, illustrated the cover of the first ever Tripe+Drisheen magazine . As the exhibition title makes clear each artist expresses a vision of Cork.
Time, date, place: May 20-22, Notes to Cork, Douglas Street (opposite Fionnbarras pub)
🌳 Marina Park opening: As mentioned above, it’s a big day for Marina Park this coming Saturday and to mark the city’s top brass turning out to welcome the Taoiseach and cut ribbons etc. there’s plenty of family-friendly fun. Circus Factory will be putting on free shows for kids during the morning, there’ll also be a dance party with Stevie G and Cork Healthy Cities’ are bringing their outdoor game pack including giant Connect 4, giant Jenga and they’ll be organising a tug o’ war in the Park.
Time, date, place: 11 am onwards, May 21, Marina Park
🚲 Cork Bike Week continues: Lots and lots of bicycle-themed events planned for the final weekend of Cork Bike Week including a street art tour and Ibop, the disco on wheels. Visit their website for a full list of the events.
Time, date, place: until May 22, various venues across Cork
This week on T+D
It was a busy week of news on Tripe+Driseen this week. On Tuesday, we published a round-up of some of the events planned for Cork Bike Week which you can read here.
On Wednesday, Ellie wrote about Councillor Oliver Moran’s intention to propose that Cork City Council seek an injunction against AirBnB, to prevent the global short-term letting website from advertising properties let illegally in Cork. You can read that piece here.
And on Thursday, we published the latest in our Lives Less Ordinary series, this time about John Dwyer of Bunker Vinyl, a record shop in the city centre. John has as many friends as he has records! You can read that piece here.
That’s it for this week’s Friday View. Watch out for tomorrow’s instalment of our Arts+ Culture newsletter from Ellie.
Any tips, news or events you’d like to share with Tripe+Drisheen, you can contact either of us at jj.odonoghue@gmail.com or emailellieobyrne@gmail.com. We are always happy to speak to people off the record in the first instance, and we will treat your information with confidence and sensitivity. Get in touch.
Apologies Grace. Corrected it online after it was published, but cldn’t back edit in newsletter version!