🌸The Friday View 03/03
A city centre parklet moves on, a new mural goes up on Paul Street and yet another international chain is to set up on St. Patrick's St. Plus, our round-up of events for the coming week.
Dia dhuit, and welcome to the Friday View from Tripe+Drisheen. Thanks for your support and do help spread the word about T+D.
News in brief
Consolidation continues: What do heat! Bella, Take a Break, that's life!, TV Choice, Newstalk, Today FM, Spin and RedFM have in common? They all fall under the ownership of German-owned Bauer Media which acquired Cork’s RedFM this week. The station was founded in 2002 and was owed by a number of different parties including Vienna Investments Limited, joint owned by Pearse Farrell and Bernadette Keogh. The Irish Times took a stake in Red when it bought The Irish Examiner. Bauer claims it will reach 1.9 million listeners a week. 96FM and C103FM were the dominant local stations until the arrival of Red 20 years ago. 96FM and C103FM are owned by the UK-based Wireless Group, which is owned by News Corp, which is owned by a very well-known media family, the Murdochs.
Communities get creative: Applications are open for the ‘Creative Communities’ grant, which is designed to get artists collaborating with local communities. There are five themes through which funding is granted, and they’re wide enough to drive a bus through: story telling; enriching a sense of place; to support creative industry, ambition and risk taking; to promote wellbeing through creative engagement; and to be climate active. Community projects in Cork city which fall under the Creative Ireland initiative include Ardú Street Art Initiative; One City One Book; Kinship Creative Climate Action and Cruinníu na nÓg. The maximum amount for each project is €3,000 and applications are open now until April 23. Details here.
A parklet moves on: Visitors to the city centre might have noticed the absence of the parklet on Cook St. In 2021 it was set down just outside Il Padrino, where Cook St. meets the South Mall, closeby to a sister parklet placed outside the Imperial Hotel, literally around the corner from Cook St. The former Cook St. parklet is one of nearly a dozen dinky little wooden structures dotted around the city centre and suburbs which are made by Benchspace, based down in the Marina. Cork City Council told T+D that the parklet has been moved to Gerry O’Sullivan Park in Churchfield, saying that it was damaged by a truck.
The parklets are a partnership effort: the council pays for their construction and a local business maintains the plants and keeps the parklet tidy. In an interview back in 2021, Justine Looney from Cork Flower Studio on Douglas Street - the original parklet was placed outside CFS - told me that the parklets do require a good deal of maintenance and upkeep. Plants get ripped out, cans, cigarette butts, junk food and even syringes have been found in the parklets. It’s likely that not all parklet partnerships will last. The placing of the Cook St. parklet was a curious one for a few reasons: it was right on the corner of the street, and as happened there was the possibility of it being damaged by a truck or car. (Cook St., unlike Princes St., is open to traffic in the mornings). Also, the Cook St. parklet always felt like the forgotten little sibling of the Imperial Hotel parklet. The parklets are an ongoing ‘third way’ experiment, tying the City Council and private businesses together to create a recreational space for the public. Businesses can opt out of the arrangement. And as we are seeing, the parklets are not going to work out in every location and with every business owner. It might have better luck in Gerry O’Sullivan Park.
St. Patrick’s Street watch: Who had international doughnut giant Krispy Kreme opening on St. Patrick’s Street on their bingo card? Congrats if you did. The American chain will open where Porters was located. Last month I went up and down the main street for a long read on ‘Pana’. One of the things that’s unique about the street is that it doesn’t allow for outdoor dining. There’s no sign that bye-laws will be changed to accommodate Krispy Kreme, but I distinctly recall a conversation with one of the the people I talked to for that piece outlining why it’s important Cork’s status as a WHO Healthy City inform what businesses open on St. Patrick’s St. There seems to be a hole in that thinking!
Potential vs reality: Some of the reporting around last week’s news that Cork was voted the best small European city for economic potential for the second year in a row was borderline jingoistic. The report from FDI, which formed the basis for The Financial Times European Cities and Regions of the Future awards, looked at five key areas and included a lot of data points. These included metrics such as the number of 4 and 5 star hotels, average salary of skilled workers, quality of roads, number of jobs created by all inward FDI, total number of companies within the hi-tech service sector in 2022, as well as corporation tax to cherry pick a few. Cork scored well across the board, coming second overall behind Basel in the small city category. However, what where would Cork city have rannked if metrics such as house and rental prices, homelessness rates, and hospital waiting times were included? Maybe local and national media could have taken a breath and looked up those stats to include and added to their reports? The full report and list of winners from The FT is here.
Tweet of the week: Remembering Rory
Out + About
🎼Musical Neighbourhoods, a series of free lunchtime concerts returns to Hollyhill Library starting today. On the bill this week are Frances Curran on the banjo and Paul Clesham on the fiddle, concertina and piano. All welcome.
Time, date, place: 1pm, Friday March 3, Hollyhill Library, Harbour View Road, Knocknaheeny
🖼Following on from curating New Yin Art, which finished up last week at the Firkin Crane, painter Dermot Browne returns to the dance centre for The Beauty of Everyday Things. The new solo exhibition of Dermot’s paintings opened this week, and runs until April 15. More information and times here.
Time, date, place: Monday-Saturday until April 15, Musgrave Theatre, Firkin Crane, Shadon
📚Scottish poet, playwright and novelist Jackie Kay will give a public reading as part of the creative writing reading series run by UCC’s English Department. Kay is the author of Other Lovers (1993), Trumpet (1998) and Red Dust Road (2011) and will be in conversation with Dr Liz Quirke, a poet attached to the English Department.
Time, date, place: 6:30pm, Wednesday March 8, Dora Allman Room, The Hub, UCC
🎤Dr Michael Waldron will take to the lectern this weekend in the ongoing series of lectures from Cork Decorative & Fine Arts Society. Dr Waldron, a curator from The Crawford Art Gallery, will explore the life, times and work of Edith Somerville who grew up in Castletownshend in West Cork. Summerville was a prolific artist, writer and illustrator. Together with Violet Martin established the successful partnership, Somerville & Ross, and wrote The Real Charlotte and the ‘Irish R.M.’ stories. Attendees are welcome to come along early for a cup of tea before the lecture.
Time, date, place: 11:30am, Saturday March 4, the Conference Room, Nano Nagle Place, Douglas Street
🎼As part of this year’s Seachtain na Gaeilge festivities, singer Ceara Conway will join cellist Kevin Murphy for a free concert in The Mills Inn, Baile Bhuirne on March 10. Ceara is a singer and an artist, and last year toured the country with Coain, her album which explored all aspects of the piercing and haunting “cry”.
Time, date, place: 8pm, Friday March 10, The Mills Inn, Baile Bhuirne
This week on T+D
On Monday, Ellie reported that Cork county gets the third lowest allocation of roads funding in the country. You can read that full story here.
On Wednesday, we announced details of our first ever photo competition. The theme is the bridges of Cork and the competition is open to everyone. We’ll be selecting one winner each week and featuring that photo on the Friday View with one overall winner who to be announced at the end of April. (There’s a cash prize as well as the glory that comes with winning T+D’s first-ever photo competition). So get busy snapping and send us your bridge pictures.
That’s it for this week’s Friday View. We’re back tomorrow with a long read from Ellie. Any tips, news or events you’d like to share with Tripe+Drisheen, you can contact us via our About page here. 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. Have a lovely weekend.