World Tour of the Liberties

As July draws to a close, we are also winding up of intensive series of events in our home base of the Liberties.

The Liberties is a historic and diverse community, housing a wide range of community organisations, and over the years, we have worked with nearly all of them. Here is a summary of our projects in the Liberties during July.

Samba in the Rain. Youth Worker Gayle doesn't let a shower stop her from having a go on the drums.

Over the last three weeks, we have been delivering drumming workshops on behalf of Dublin City Council in the Sophia Housing complex on Cork Street, and in the Oliver Bond Flats. These workshops were for local children, and we met some great characters and talented drummers along the way. Hopefully, some of them will join the Masamba Youth Project when we resume on September 4^th.

Last week, we re-connected with the Liberties Festival, delivering a long-overdue carnival parade through the street of Pimlico, finishing up at the Sacred Heart Statue at the junction of Gray Street and Reginald Street. We were joined for this event by three other community groups – the Atomic Stage School, under the direction of Mark Kennedy, Fusion Murga and the Freedom School of Dance. A big shout out too to Aoife McKenna for helping us out on the day, and making life a lot easier for us! This project was supported by the Dublin City Arts Office.

Also, through the Liberties Festival, we returned the Irish Museum of Modern Art to perform at the 17^thLiberties Fun Run. This event is a fundraiser for St. James’s Hospital Foundation, and attracted nearly 1,000 runners and walkers. We have performed at this event several times in the past, so it was great to return to support it. We’re told that the event raised over €50,000 this year!

Simeon completes the Liberties Fun Run in record time!

Yesterday, we completed another great project for the HSE at their Bru Caoimhin Centre on Cork Street. Here. we delivered 8 weeks of workshops with a really lovely group of local residents, having a lot of laughs along the way.

Of course, we have been based in the Liberties for over 20 years, and everywhere we went, people came over to say hello, or stuck their heads out of flat windows to remind us of where they know us from! The generosity of the people of the area should also be commended. One day a passer-by tried to offer us €20, just because we were providing a service for local children. Another time, project participants gave us thank-you cards with scratch cards in them – it’s true to say that it is often the people with the least are the first to share, and that’s the spirit of the Liberties.