Foil, Arms and Hog Comedians
When people think of future Dublin, they probably think of flying cars and connecting Luas lines. It doesn’t really matter what physically changes, we’ll still be the same people. Sure, the Liffey will be 60% trolleys and Molly Malone’s knockers will be that bit shinier, but our young girls will still be orange (albeit from some Nuclear holocaust radiation burning). You see, we’ll be alright, because no matter what happens, we’ll still laugh at ourselves “what in God’s name were we thinkin startin a war wit dem Chinese.”
Ian Dempsey Presenter, Today FM
Radio and TV will have changed so much that it won’t even exist.Everybody in Dublin will have personal radio stations and TV will be called ‘I Demand’ where you can use a ‘SIMplant’ in the brain to choose a comedy drama or an action thriller – and just by thinking about your favourite artist you’ll hear their music in your ears. Known as great communicators, Dubliners, very surprisingly, will have stopped talking to each other in person and only communicate through social networks such as TOTY.
Ali Grehan Dublin City Architect, Pivot Dublin
Rising sea levels and increased surface water flooding mean that a future Dublin could be under water. That’s just one issue facing us. What about traffic, dereliction, greening, ageing, poverty? City issues are complex and interactive – everything is connected and these connections are often neither linear nor obvious. Design is a collaborative means to understand issues and develop empathic solutions. Out of necessity, Dublin will become a design driven city, design focused in how we think, plan and act. We’ll be brave enough to apply the design process and implement the outcomes, in order to stay land borne and thrive!
Moninne Griffith Director of Marriage Equality
Same-sex couples can hold hands wandering up Grafton Street, walking their dogs in Phoenix Park or wheeling their babies along in Stephen’s Green and no one notices it as anything remarkable – except maybe how in love they look. Images of families around the city from billboards to bus stops include same-sex families, both with children and without, celebrating the diversity of Dublin life. Down at the registry office on Grand Canal Street same-sex couples celebrate getting married alongside heterosexual couples and their love and commitment to each other is recognised and protected by the State equally.
Danny Carroll Presenter, Community of Independents
Television: It will go the same way as its mutley chum radio, with the tail of advertising wagging the dog of creative. In an attempt to combat ‘on demand’ services, stations will spew out a litany of shows “brought to you by”, “with thanks to” and “in association with our generous sponsor and sole reason for existence”. In the future product placement will pervert the purpose of any well-meaning broadcasters, while the few Dubliners still watching Irish TV can enjoy cheap and cheerful DIY stuff (HI!), Celebrity Bainisteoir Revisited and The Creepy Audience Member Clip Show. Bahs and various humbugs.
Ronan Burtenshaw Editor, Trinity News
The accelerated polarisation of the austerity years mean that talking about ‘a Dublin’ is impossible. There isn’t going to be anything that can be described as a whole – a city of solidarity or equality. There are going to be at least two worlds in the city for the forseeable future. One of the well-to-do – with opportunity and prosperity. And another for whom those will become distant dreams amid empty buildings and over-flowing dole queues, shut down services and newly opened prisons. You want a picture of the future – imagine IBEC stamping on a human face. Forever.
Greg McElherron Sales and Marketing
Nowadays when people talk about the Celtic Tiger they tend to focus only on the greed of a few and a general loss of moral direction but I for one enjoyed living in a city that had a fast pulse, a sense of excitement and a desire to experiment with bonkers pubs, Spiegeltents and strange brews. We all know it came to a sad end but there were some genuinely innovative players at work (Hugh O’Regan) with great ideas who made an outstanding contribution to this great city and now it’s time for a new breed to step up and take Dublin forward.
Martin Thomas Promoter and Marketer
The future looks more like the early 90s than the mid 2010s in many ways. The early 90s saw the initial explosion of creative independent nightlife catering for all sorts of tastes and I believe the scene will regenerate again as many existing venues run out of ideas and/or money and the real innovators get their hands on things. Big faceless venues are now just unattractive to people. Going out in town is all about being entertained, respected and valued. Restoring the past glory of Dublin nightlife – it’s up to the new creative forces to make it happen.
Aisling Rogerson Proprietor, The Fumbally
I guess to look forward you need to look back and also see where you presently are. We never really had a ‘food scene’ of our own did we? Dublin seemed to merely duplicate and imitate for decades. We weren’t forerunners, we were followers. Now for the first time we are using our own imagination, initiative and tastebuds when it comes to cuisine. We’re genuinely utilizing the wealth of amazing produce that this country boasts and being creative with our concepts. Hard times taught us that. Dublin can only continue on this path. We’re all hungry for more, aren’t we?
Conor O’Brien Architect/Urban Strategist with Res Publica
The future of Dublin will be defined by a new geography of public space. What will signify the civic virtue of the city in the future will not be the Corinthian columns of the Bank of Ireland or those of the Four Courts but rather a network of engaging public space connecting the city’s streets and squares, gardens and parks. The logic of distributed networks that has democratized access to virtual space can be translated into physical city. Much of the city’s rich public spaces during the 20th century were re-qualified to serve one primary purpose, the movement of automobiles. In the future Dublin will revert to prioritizing people, manifesting itself through the redefinition of public space in the city. A civic spine will link Parnell Square to Stephen’s Green, a Grand Canal linear park will run from Docklands to Clonburris, a continuous parkland will run alongside the liffey from mouth to source.
Lethal Dialect Rapper
The future of hip-hop in Ireland looks positive. When I started recording tracks and calling myself a rapper there had been few before me and even fewer who accepted homegrown hip-hop as a legitimate form of music. The likes of Scary Eire and Urban Intelligence had set the standard for domestic hip-hop for me but both groups were in my opinion, highly under-appreciated and with the passing of Lunitic things looked bleek. Fast forward roughly seven years and Irish hip-hop is flourishing. I can’t walk through any neighborhood in Dublin without four or five young rappers approaching me, eager to drop their latest 16 bar verse.
Conor Nolan Graphic designer (Conor & David)
In 100 years Dublin will have long cemented its place among the World’s capitals as a creative megalopolis on the edge of Neuropia. My mummified remains, petrified from my last late night of work and hunched over a dusty Mac, are the highlight of the ever popular Dublin design tour. Rest assured graphic designers will still arrive to work wearing the same outfit as each other, the current studio vogue being something akin to a Belgian monk sponsored by Adidas. They’ll ride to work on their customised hoverboards and trawl through the skynet for news of the latest iBlink 5.
Jack Gilligan Chairman, Dublin Writers’ Centre
The increasing interest in creative writing as a career choice and the ever growing number of book clubs in the city bodes well for Dublin’s literary future. Many emerging and established contemporary writers will distinguish themselves nationally and internationally and proudly defend Dublin’s worldwide reputation as a City of Literature. Public funding for writing and publishing is unlikely to improve substantially in the future but the sector will become more resourceful and Dublin writers will continue to produce excellent work and will reach wider audiences through electronic and print media.
Rayne Booth, Curator, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios
The way we communicate using technology has changed so much in the last decade that in another ten years time I think that it will have profoundly altered the way we think. The kids that can’t remember a time before web 2.0 will have grown up and some of them will be making art. I don’t know what that will look like but I can’t wait to see it. I love Dublin now, with its proliferation of new creative enterprises. Spaces like Block T and the Chocolate Factory hark back to when Temple Bar Gallery + Studios was set up during the last recession in the early ‘80s. I would hate to see Dublin lose this energy again. DIY attitudes are really encouraging, but it is still critical that the arts are funded. Free access to galleries and museums in Dublin is something that sets us apart as a city. I would like to think that in ten-years-time Dublin will have built on these last few exciting years in which artists and creative people have been a driving force in improving what our city has to offer, but also that we will have realised the importance of improving supports for the arts through public funding and philanthropy.
Peter Breen Communications Manager, Leinster Rugby
Times will change; cars will be smaller, the air will become thinner. But rugby will continue to thrive. With the club and schools game flourishing at all age levels, the women’s game going from strength to strength, an army of volunteers and followers triggering a sizable local, national and international movement of change and the flagship senior side contesting silverware, the future bodes well for rugby in the province. Participation, passion and precision: It is hoped that in the future, people will look back at 2012 as the start of the golden era of Leinster Rugby rather than the end.
Michael Hill Curator, Douglas Hyde Gallery
With the combination of impending mergers between large institutions (NGI, IMMA), and the continuing rise of artist-run project spaces and studios (Block T, Pallas Projects/Studios), collaboration and a sense of community within the Dublin visual art scene is certain to endure. Even with increasingly limited access to resources and funding, there is much scope and potential for exciting developments as galleries and artists will need to be especially creative in order to maintain the values and intentions that are central to their work.
Sam Lowther Manager, FXB restaurant
I foresee a bright future for Dublin diners. From the wasteland of the late noughties crash has grown a creative, colourful and even daring restaurant scene, that is rewriting the rules as it goes. Restaurateurs have dispensed with previous conservative, generic patterns and have begun to embrace a bolder, more dynamic strategy. Lessons have been learned. The twin bars of quality and value have been raised significantly. It’s an exciting and challenging time and encouraging to see businesses being rewarded for doing right by their customers. Mediocrity had become the city’s signature dish, thankfully it’s now firmly off the menu!
Peter Prendergast Director/Curator, Monster Truck
I hope it looks like the Blade Runner set or Back to the Future Two. Although I would prefer Blade Runner.This might of course mean we relax our immigration rules so we can get the other nationalities we need to create a new language and the many noodle bars required. By the way things are going now it looks like the farmers will move to the city and create vegetable patches and small farms in all the derelict spaces and farmers markets on every street. Beetroot and carrots where homeless people used to sleep. Of course it will be a really green, clean, car free environment also, with pedestrians and cyclists ruling the road. A whole place chock-a-block with bicycles, future hipsters, haircuts, farmers, vegetable patches and family friendly events. We might also see a two tier rates system where business with proven cultural value pay less while we hammer the businesses and large chains that promote anti social behavior – possibly through a points system.
Emily Aoibheann Performance Artist and Aerial Acrobat, Paperdolls
Imagine being able to tune into someone’s mind, like you would a radio station. In 100 years, we may have the option of physically integrated media and communication devices – broadband receivers in our heads – which would present the possibility of non-verbal, visual communication, i.e. telepathy. Experiencing immersive visual art on a whole new, neurological level, drugs of the future may be technological, creating visual art junkies. It would be fascinating to know how Dublin’s future artists might maintain our artistic reputation in a world with whole new communicative possibilities for our imaginations to play with, literally.
Ré Dubhthaigh & Tara Whelan The Civic Works
In 2060, Dublin’s economy and institutions have dispersed into 100,000 garages, flats, locadoras and pubs. Stripe’s RepCoin UX team jockey for space with HEDGEschool synth-bio classes in the back of the Stag’s Head. Animal gangs canvas householders for waste disposal contracts, supplying back-alley fablabs in Clongriffin. D8 shawlies sell home-brew mead to tourists while bitmining kupiecs game the Börse and SEHK on rotating shifts in Blanche. The 347 Dublin councils, ländereens, co-ops, liberties and guilds continue their joint attempt to re-negotiate feed-in tariffs with the Connaught wind banks. The Luas is stuck at Broombridge again. Life trundles on.
Kay Bear Kloss Director, Moxie Studios
In a year’s time you’ll likely see LGBT rights and equalities progress – marriage equality, trans recognition – well before we see appropriate resolution of women’s reproductive health rights. In ten years’ time, we will likely still be recovering from the recession that the greed and corruption between political and banking spheres has caused – likely, possibly even a second bust within that time if the public do not demand change. Internet will not be recognisable as the thing it is today, and will more closely resemble immersive Augmented Reality. Heavy snowfall and flooding rainstorms will be an annual marker of the seasons.
Rosa Abbott Arts Editor
Exhibitions in Dublin will increase in attendance. Not only in galleries, but in vacant spaces, private residences and online, driven by a new proactivity and DIY ethic on the part of emerging artists and curators. Dublin Contemporary 2022 will be more heavily attended than the Venice Biennale, as the international art world realises that drinking Buckfast on the banks of our Grand Canal is a lot more fun than sniffing coke off a gondola on the other one.
