“Other things can be difficult, but a home should be a given, from this all else follows” – Niall Sweeney, Co-founder of Pony Design.
Your creative highlight of 2018?
Clearly I am biased, but it’s what I know:
Trilate Shift, Oberman Knocks’ latest double vinyl album.
Made In Dublin, the book and the film I have been collaborating on with Eamonn Doyle, David Donohoe and Kevin Barry.
Working with photographer Chris Killip and making some very special books with him.
And a piece I wrote for my Dad last April.
Your personal creative goal for 2019?
To get some sleep. To move forwards. And to do good work.
You get to redesign or reimagine Dublin in one way, what would you do?
Affordable homes — actual places people can securely call a home right there in the city, not in siege camps on the outskirts. For people to wake up in the morning in their own warm bed and not have that nauseating fear that they need to triple time and life to pay for four walls and a roof that they can actually call their own. Or worse, your home has been taken off you, or to think that a home of your own is just never going to be within your reach or part of your life.
To have a home should be the easiest, simplest starting point, not some kind of stress-inducing “life goal” or some kind of financial prospecting that benefits the ego-driven slush funds of others. Other things can be difficult, but a home should be a given, from this all else follows.
How would you describe the Dublin of your dreams, in 18 words or less?
A busy, functioning, modern Irish city full of people of all kinds who live in their own homes.
Three of your local creative heroes, people who people need to know about.
My Mum (perennial librarian, activist and futurist)
Eamonn Doyle (from D1 to K and beyond)
Wendy Judge (artist, sculptor, surveillance agent)
Words: Richard Seabrooke
