Festival Archive 2023

The programme was launched on Wednesday 19th April in the stunning grounds of Christchurch Cathedral with local school children from St Brigid's, The Coombe and Inchicore drumming school MaSamba Samba.

An in-person programme launch was later held in Roe & Co Distillery on James's Street in the evening, with a chance for all the programming partners to get together, with a guest speech by Historian, Donal Fallon.

This year we celebrated the 5th year of our festival with a programme bigger and better than ever before. Dublin 8 came alive with over 50 specially curated events including talks, walks, markets, performances, workshops, outdoor cinema, tours and more, celebrating all that makes D8 great! We partnered with over 30 different local historical landmarks, heritage sites and museums, the area's world famous breweries and distilleries, churches, independent cultural spaces and walking tour organisations allowing us to discover all the sights, delights and hidden gems that this area has to offer.

This year, the festival commemorated 100 years since the end of the Irish Civil War with a unique festival programming strand that reflected upon this emotional milestone in Irish history. You can read more about this below.

Read our programme press release here.

This year, the festival commemorated 100 years since the end of the Irish Civil War with a unique festival programming strand that reflected upon this emotional milestone in Irish history. Tours of Goldenbridge Cemetery, alongside history talks with Donal Fallon and Ronan McGreevy were part of this year's festival, as well as a specially commissioned essay by Donal Fallon on sites of the Civil War in Dublin 8.

We had a Culture Date with Dublin 8 special edition of D8 Live as the curtain opener for the weekend. Guests on the show included: Grace McEvoy (Project Manager of Culture Date with Dublin 8), Donal Fallon (Three Castles Burning Podcast), Amy Ryan & Olga Taranova (Marsh's Library), Viki Baird (Stillgarden Distillery), Eve Woods (Pallas Projects), Venus Patel (Artist) and Fintan Warfield (Senator & Musician)

D8 Live is a variety show featuring interviews and entertainment from Dublin 8's musicians, artists, politicians, writers and historians and other luminaries. The one items all our guests have in common is a local connection: either they are from the area, or their subject matter is. The show is presented by Gerry Mullins, a former journalist, author and D8 resident.