Tripe+Drisheen: The Friday View 06/08
Our weekly round-up of news and events across the city, county... and Japan.
It’s the final weekend of Olympic action and Aoife Cooke will be running (her heart out) in the marathon in Sapporo, in the northern island of Hokkaido. It’s the biggest race of her life; very best of luck to Aoife, her team, trainer John “Stazza” Starrett and all her club mates cheering her on from Eagle AC in Cork. We interviewed Aoife after she qualified for the marathon earlier this year and before she took off for training camp in Utah. Free to read here.
The English Market and a big American super corporation
For this week’s long read, Ellie went to the English Market to tell the story of its connection with Aramark, probably better known, if they’re known at all here, for their contracts to provide services to prisons in the U.S. and in direct provision centres in Ireland. Great bit of informative local journalism. Free to read, support welcome.
Test Site on Kyrl’s Quay have a series of interesting talks coming up this month. Tomorrow, Saturday, July 7, Crawford Art Gallery director Mary McCarthy will chair a discussion titled “Who Plans the City?” Mary will be joined by Rosie Lynch (Workhouse Union), Fearghal Reidy (Cork City Council), Cian O’Callaghan (Urban Geographer, TCD) and Kate O’Shea (Artist / Activist). The former derelict site on Kyrl’s Quay is owned by the city council, i.e. all of us.
We spoke to Fearghal who oversees the city council’s efforts to tackle vacancy and dereliction in our second ever piece on Tripe+Drisheen. Hopefully these discussions will be recorded and archived.
Art in the park
Cycling out of town this week we spotted the posters for “Brain Worms”, artist Elinor O’Donovan’s upcoming outdoor exhibition in Fitzgerald’s Park. It opens tomorrow, 7 August and continues until 9 September. Elinor is a graduate of Edinburgh College of Art and this is her first major solo exhibition and in it she explores the diminishing divide between the internet and real life. As Elinor says in her press notes, so much of what happens IRL stems from the internet, and vice-versa.
Elinor is also a graduate of Sample Studios in Cork, where she was artist in residence. “Brain Worms” is supported by Sample Studios, Cork City Council and the Arts Council.
Walk this way
Cork Benchmarks have an intriguing free walk planned for urban explorers taking place on Thursday, 19 August. The premise for this walk is simple: to map the surviving Ordnance Survey benchmarks of the as part of a project supported by Cork City Council. Register here.
(Sad face) Tweet of the week
Dr Eoin Lettice of UCC with a selection of city trees versus utility lines. More here. Cities around the world are increasingly burying utility lines. We’re not there yet, and I suspect many residents in Cork never want to see their streets dug up again.
And one more tweet: from happier times!
That’s it for this week’s round-up. We’re back Sunday with our long read, instalment seven of Our Cork 2040.
Also, we’re likely going to be adding a history column from someone who knows a fair deal about Cork history. We’re grateful to all our subscribers, especially our paying subscribers, as you’re helping us in our project to publish in-depth and independent local journalism, as well as publishing new voices. Thank you again.
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.