The Friday View 11/11
Protests, pottery, Polish Independence Day, movie binges and a rare opportunity to visit Ireland's only space station in East Cork
Ellie writes….
Just a very short thought today: we normally like to run an op-ed to lead off the Friday View but it’s been a busy week and there’s more of it to come!
Record new readers
I just want to thank the record number of new sign-ups over the past month for joining the growing Tripe + Drisheen community. It’s fantastic to see more and more people become interested in what we do and in the independent, ad-free, reader-supported media model that we offer.
A heartfelt thanks to all of you who are paid subscribers, some of you who have been with us since the very beginning.
We never want to pay-wall our articles because our ethos is based around the idea that quality local journalism should be accessible to all, and the reality of that is that our paid subscribers are not only paying for Tripe + Drisheen for themselves, but for those who can’t afford to pay too.
The more subscribers we get, the more local news and features we want to produce. We understand that not everyone wants to get multiple emails in their inbox so this is just a reminder to sign-ups that you can choose which Tripe + Drisheen articles you get by email and which you don’t: Substack has a function where you can select or de-select what gets sent to you by choosing tabs.
So if you love our news stories but don’t have time for Long Reads, or if you love Arts + Culture but don’t want to be pestered with news, here’s a short guide on how to tailor your tripe:
Photo of the week: celebrating Polish Independence Day
No, it’s not a Cork City FC reference or indeed a Corkonian pat on the back…the colours of the Polish Flag are also red and white. Today, Friday, is Polish Independence Day: on November 11 1918, the second Polish Republic was founded, after 123 years of rule by the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires.
Over 25,000 Polish people live in Cork city and county, making Poles the largest minority group in Cork. On Thursday, there was a small ceremony at Cork City Hall to mark the occasion and JJ snapped this shot of the Polish flag flying overnight.
News in brief
Have your say on the imminent Residential Zoned Land Tax
A new Residential Zoned Land Tax (RZLT) will see landowners whose land has been zoned for residential purposes taxed 3% of the value of their land per year from the start of 2024.
Cork City residents are currently able to make submissions on a draft map: if you spot land that shouldn’t be zoned residential, or land that should be included, you can view the map and make submissions, with a deadline of January 1 2023, here.
Just Stop Oil comes to Cork?
A 26-year-old man was arrested yesterday evening after he entered the Crawford Art Gallery’s Modern Gallery on the second floor and threw soup at a George Atkinson drawing. The artwork was glazed and so was not damaged in the incident although the surrounding wall is in need of repair and is currently cordoned off.
The incident seems to ape a series of recent highly publicised soup attacks on artworks including Van Gogh’s Sunflowers by Just Stop Oil protesters, mostly in the UK and with the purpose of putting the spotlight on climate change. However, the man, from North Cork, who carried out the Cork attack is not known to have made any statements on social media in advance of his action.
Ironically enough, the artist George Atkinson is best known for his drawings of the Ardnacrusha Hydro-Electric Scheme, built in Ireland in 1925 to provide oil-free energy security to the emerging Irish state. A counter-protest perhaps?!
€337,000 for gigs in Cork city and county venues
43 venues in Cork city and county have been awarded €337,800 in funding by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media to hold gigs under a new “Night-Time Economy Support Scheme.”
Cork City venues including The Kino, Coughlan’s, The Franciscan Well and Maureen’s were granted €143,000 in total, while Cork County venues including De Barra’s of Clonakilty, The Blue Loo in Glengarriff and Baile Mhúirne’s Ionad Cultúrtha received €194,800.
The funds are part of a €4 million package allocated to 433 venues nationwide for over 2,000 events including DJ nights, theatre, comedy, dance, literature, art and photographic exhibitions.
Following on from concerns that licensing law reforms expected to come into effect next year will see an increase in alcohol consumption and attendant anti-social behaviour, the scheme included a specific strand of funding for unlicensed premises like cafés.
Nationally, unlicensed venues received just over 10% of the funding. In Cork City, just two unlicensed venues, MYO Café and Cork Circus Factory, got funding.
Cork International Film Festival 2022 kicks off
Eleven days of film screenings began last night with the opening Gala of Cork International Film Festival 2022, a screening of Frank Berry’s Aisha, at Cork Opera House. The full online programme is available here.
County Arts grants schemes for 2023 open this morning
Three strands of funding for arts by Cork County Council open this morning, under the Arts Grant Scheme, the Artists in Schools Scheme and the Irish Language Tionscadail Ealaíon nó Imeachtaí a úsáideann an Ghaeilge Scheme. People who want to apply have until the January 10 deadline to make an application here.
Out + About
Cork Film Festival: Revisit the old Fás Office on film
It’s the Fás Office, but not as you know it. When the building that had housed Sample-Studios and a host of other artists was demolished in 2018, artist Natasha Bourke was on hand to document the final days of the building and its demolition. What she has produced is no talking-heads-style documentary, but a weird and wonderful surrealist art film called Concrete Keys, featuring performances from curious beaked creatures, and cats eating a scale model of the Fás building even as dinosaur-like demolition machines set about nibbling the real structure into a pile of rubble. The film gets its premiere as part of Parallax, the festival’s experimental film programme.
Time, date, place: Monday, November 14 at 7:30pm at The Gate Cinema, North Main St, Cork.
A protest against the rising cost of living
Energy and fuel price hikes, rents continuing to increase, food bills increasing…Cork Cost of Living Campaign, part of the National Cost of Living Coalition, estimate that 4,000 people attended their first protest in September, while media reports put the figure at closer to 3,000. A second protest is set to take place Saturday, with organisers saying they are hoping for as strong a turnout as last time. Caitríona Twomey from Cork Penny Dinners and Don O'Leary from Cork Life Centre will both speak at the event.
Time, date, place: Saturday, November 12 at 2pm on Grand Parade, Cork city.
Craft and Design fair at the Glucksman
50 craftspeople including jewellers, woodturners, ceramists, stationers and printmakers will be manning stalls at UCC’s Glucksman Gallery this weekend for their annual craft fair. We’re nowhere near ready to start saying the C-word at Tripe + Drisheen yet, but if you needed to buy anyone a locally made gift while supporting crafty folk, this would be the place to do it.
Time, date, place: Friday, November 11 - Sunday, November 13 at the Glucksman Gallery in the grounds of UCC. Opening times and more info here.
Book your place in space
The National Space Centre outside Midleton is a truly extraordinary place, but not generally open to the public. Tripe + Drisheen paid a visit last December for this podcast episode:
Next week, Greywood Arts artists-in-residence Emilia Tapprest and Valerie Van Zuijlan will launch their video installation, Our Side of the Moon, alongside Hello Out There! a photography project by nearly 100 young people in East Cork and artist Róisín White. Part of Space Fest, a science week festival, the evening will include a panel discussion with the artists. But it’s strictly a pre-booking event and you must email as below before Wednesday, November 16 to attend.
Time, date, place: Friday, November 18 at 7:30pm at The National Space Centre, Elfordstown Earth Station, near Midleton. Booking essential: contact create@greywoodarts.org.
More clay, less plastic in your gardens
Sculptor Martha Cashman is running ceramic bird feeder workshops in the Glen Community Centre. Martha is the founder of More Clay Less Plastic Ireland, an initiative to highlight how plastic has hijacked our materials economy, pushing out skills bases such as pottery and making us less self-reliant and more environmentally polluting. She’s teaching people how to make bird feeders for their gardens out of clay in these evening workshops.
Time, date, place: Thursday November 17 and 24, 7pm to 9pm. Book by emailing saintlukescommunitygarden@gmail.com
This week on T + D:
Monday: We put a call-out on social media for new contributing freelancers - we urgently need more writers! Things are changing at Tripe + Drisheen and thanks to our amazing and growing pool of paid subscribers, we are in a position to commission more work. You can contact Ellie on emailellieobyrne@gmail.com if you have story ideas and would like to write for us: we pay everyone the same fair rate and treat everyone with respect. Please either help us spread the word on this or, better still, become a paid subscriber so that we can expand the number of writers we work with still further.
Wednesday: We followed up on last Friday’s story that social housing was taking a year and a half to renovate and re-let in Cork city by asking Cork City Council for a response:
Thursday: We reported in-depth from Cork Centre for Architectural Education’s (CCAE) first ever student protest: 84 students did a 24-hour drawing marathon to come up with alternative designs for Cork’s derelict buildings, some of which we’ve been covering on Tripe + Drisheen since we launched:
Something for the weekend: Still ahead, tomorrow we open the lid on Cork’s newest art gallery for our Arts + Culture feature and on Sunday we have a very special Lives Less Ordinary to share with you.
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