Liberties Festival Director Michael McDermott celebrates this year’s edition of beloved inner-city Dublin community gathering The Liberties Festival, which runs July 21st – 28th.
The Liberties Festival, which starts next week, is the culmination of a stream of notes on my iPhone marked ‘Festival 2025’ which I have been compiling over the last year. Some ideas weren’t realised last year. Some are random thoughts from scrolling Instagram, others from walking around the Liberties or Open Call submissions. Here’s how a few of the 65 events we have on came into existence…
Holding Space, which will take place in Bridgefoot Street Park, started off with me bumping into artist Erin Quinn in IMMA last autumn. She had debuted her idea at the fantastic Another Love Story festival. I was there but missed it. The concept of creating a scent unique to the area felt special and this became my first 2025 commission. We received a Dublin City Arts Office Neighbourhood grant which enabled us to undertake spring workshops with locals and Ukranian Integration participants who participate in Liberties Community Project programmes as well as 5th year students from Warrenmount. The power of scent and its interplay with memory became the foundation for this fragrance, the ‘Scent of the Liberties’, which will be revealed in a unique experience (July 22nd – 24th). We’ve also had Claire Campion and students from NCAD work on a fantastic design and are enlisting tapestries from the local Liberties Weavers. One of the scents will be ‘Rose’ in honour of the late Kathleen Farrell, who was an iconic figure selling flowers on Meath Street over the years.
Talking Shop is an idea I had about stepping into local businesses to hear their stories. Making personal connections is crucial to the survival of unique owner-run spaces. Talking to owners, knowing a bit of their backstory and getting a steer on the street is a community glue. I pitched the idea to Night-Time Economy Advisor Ray O’Donoghue, who immediately saw the value of it and supported it. I enlisted the brilliant Dublin Inquirer who are based in the Digital Hub here to have their reporters undertake the interviews and Mr & Mrs Stevens created a poster which nails the concept. It takes place from July 23rd – 25th, with Noel’s Deli, The Little Flower Penny Dinners, the Model Shop on James’s Street, Straffan Antiques, Assisi in the Liberty Market and Fusco’s chipper all on board.
I’ve been asked if we have a theme for the festival a few times. I have shied away from saying one as I feared it might strait-jacket considerations but I guess originality with a nod to heritage is the one which emerges. There’s the scent and brew projects, but also the likes of a soundwalk to record the ‘sounds of the Liberties’, which will then be workshopped and played at a concert in St Catherine’s Church (Friday July 26th), the premiere of an original composition by Sebastian Adams for the organ in St Audoen’s (Wednesday, July 23rd) and A Matter of Time Vol. 2, an exhibition which looks at labour, locality and time with photography by Ishmael Claxton, print-making by Maria Baez and a sound installation by Jye O’Sullivan (Tailor’s Hall, Thursday July 25th – Sunday July 28th).
These new explorations of the identity of the Liberties will mix with classics such as the Blue Rinse Ball and Gardaí vs Traders match. The essence of one of Ireland’s oldest community festivals, which dates back to the early 1970s, is connectivity and celebration, as significant now as ever before.
I already have an extensive list of ideas in the folder marked ‘Festival 2026’.
