The inaugural Ranelagh Arts Festival gets underway next Thursday. Rosita Boland gets a taste of reactivated community fervour.
Balls tend to conjure up images of frocks, rocks, tuxedos, and dinners that invariably elude the gastronomic memory. The Grand Annual Ball at the Inaugural Ranelagh Arts Festival, however, requires no formal dress and takes place in a local nightclub; Il Mondo, over the Four Provinces pub. Ranelagh-en-Luas is chi-chi Dublin suburbia, and as Dublin suburbs go, it is becoming ever more up-market, as even a cursory examination of the property supplements will reveal. However, ironically, one of the things most in danger of disappearing when property prices spiral upwards, is a sense of community. As residents cash in and move out, and new people move in, many are too busy to properly engage in the locality.
Setting up an arts festival in Ranelagh was first talked about some seven years ago by long-term local residents Terry Connaughton, who works in the music business, and solicitor Padraic Ferry. "Ranelagh has a lot of things, but no designated cultural centre. Or town hall," Ferry points out. The discussion came to nothing, but the idea remained. In February this year, a few people got together and went around Ranelagh, sticking up posters and inviting residents to come to a public meeting at the multi-denominational school, to talk about organising an arts festival.
"It was do or death with the idea, depending on how many people showed up," Ferry explains. Some 70 people turned up, most of them "full of enthusiasm and interest", and that night the festival stopped being a pipe-dream. People volunteered to get involved in different areas such as visual arts, administration, literary events and children's events. Various committees were formed, with a core one of 18 people, and a floating committee of some 20 others, who advised on different aspects of the festival. "We wanted to reactivate a sense of village community," Connaughton says.
An obvious question when planning a community arts festival in a suburb close to the city centre is: what does community mean now? Gone are the days when only those who owned their houses made up the members of a community. Deirdre McIntyre and Rajbir Gosal are renting property in Ranelagh, and have been on the core festival committee since the outset. Gosal had come to Dublin from London. "I was new to the area and saw it as a chance to get involved in something local. That's the key to meeting people. I thought I could use the skills I had to help out." Gosal works in IT and has designed the festival's website. "It has been a great way of meeting people who live locally," says McIntyre, who has been to all the weekly meetings since February. "If a community is to go forward, it needs to make those people renting feel a part of it too, which is what this is about for me."
The committee held a fund-raising night in a Ranelagh pub in March and 400 people turned up. They were on their way to raising the €25,000 the festival will cost. Local businesses were also supportive, and Dublin City Council gave the venture a small grant. If this year's festival, which opens on Thursday, is a success, it may become an annual event.
The festival programme uses many locations in Ranelagh: lovely, secluded Ranelagh gardens, primary schools, pubs, a church, and the tennis club. The Cinemobile will be in the Sandford Park School carpark for a day, showing family films. Altan fiddler Ciaran Tourish, a local resident, along with Arty McGlynn, Seán Óg Potts, and Fintan Vallely, will play a trad session. There's an exhibition of art by former Ranelagh resident, the late Donal O'Sullivan. The Gardiner Street Gospel Choir will join the local Cullenswood Singers to perform madrigals. There's a family open day with the Army Band, traditional games, and theatre workshops. There's also a bit of Macnas magic, when the sixth-class children of Ranelagh's four primary schools will come together for a percussion show after a week-long workshop. And there's that ball, for which you don't need a monkey suit.
There will also be an opportunity to learn a bit more about the buildings and architecture of Ranelagh. Architect Susan Roundtree will lead a walking tour around the village, explaining why, for example, Mountpleasant Square is not a square at all, but a crescent - the developers had to build around the Swan River, now culverted. And if you want to know what a rare "sugar-stick" lamp-post is, and where one is located in Ranelagh, she will bring you there.
The first Ranelagh Arts Festival will run from Sept 29th-Oct 2nd. Information and booking at www.ranelagharts.org and by phoning 085-7437212