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This 1916 thing!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
This 1916 thing!

So, it is 2016 and all you read and hear in news and newspapers about is 1916. Dublin City, Dun Laoghaire, the libraries, RTE, all newspapers and radio and TV stations are constantly referring to it and if it wasn’t for the speculations about the date for the next general elections, they would probably probably give it even more airtime and print centimetres. …and even the Dublin Event Guide (for Free Events) is filled with (free!) events that make a big story about this year a long long time ago.

So what is this 1916 thing?

If you had hoped you will get through 2016 without having to think about it, I have no good news for you. Actually, my recommendation is that you do read a little about it and maybe go to one or two (or more of the talks) so that you understand what and why people make such a big issue about it.

The event is big in Irish History and if you are not from Ireland, you might be surprised when you find out that it was a total failure and still it is such a big thing 100 years later. It was an attempt to get rid of the British occupiers, but it was badly planned and had no much support in the normal Irish population and after a few days of fighting and a LOT of deaths on both sides, the Irish fighters surrendered.

So we are celebrating this failure in 2016? No, not exactly! We are commemorating! (A small difference.) And the importance of the event comes from what came from it not what it was in 1916. Put in simple terms, you could say that it was the start of what resulted in Ireland’s Independence from Britain. So without the failure in 1916, Ireland possibly would have never (or much later) become a Republic.

The fuzz that is made about 1916 this year might appear to be unproportionally big and you could think that more fuzz should be made about the SUCCESSFUL steps to independence, but when people die for an idea, then this often leads to a certain heroification and that will be a more or less strong component of this year’s commemorations.

By the way: Not everyone agrees fully with that heroification and you might find some talks that look at the role of the leaders of the Rising in a slightly more critical way.

So, inform yourself about this piece of history of the country you live in, so that you can form your own informed opinion about the events this year.

A good starting point for finding out more is via this Google driven tour

Dublin, Events, Politics, Society,

Festival Sponsorship not the way it should be?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Festival Sponsorship not the way it should be?

Junior Minister Michael Ring (Tourism & Sport) has announced which festivals will get funding from Failte Ireland this year and there are some oddities among them. In total 23 national festivals and events are getting 1.8mio in 2016, but some should get (a lot) less and others should get more. Have a look at the list here, before you continue reading so that you can form your own opinion first.

One single festival takes the majority of money and really just leaves crumbs for the rest: The St. Patrick’s Festival sucks up a whole 1 mio and I really don’t think it is worth that amount. While the parade has significantly improved from the parades 10 or 20 years ago, it has come to a standstill for many years now. There is no more improvement and year after year, the same formula with just slight alterations will be applied. The festival route is still too short for the amount of people that would like to see something and are left bitterly disappointed and the festival would definitely benefit from an overhaul. Sure, there are still up to approximately 300,000 people on the streets for it (don’t believe the 500k lie!!) but in terms of cultural value, the St. Patrick’s Day Festival is definitely not the top event!

And a little further down the list, there are these four:
Ireland BikeFest EUR 30,000
Bloomsday EUR 25,000
City Spectacular EUR 25,000
Rock n Roll, Dublin Half Marathon EUR 20,000

The Bikefest hasn’t really impressed in recent years and 30k seems relatively high for that, where the Bloomsday uses up 25k is difficult to see and that the 100% commercial Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon gets ANY funding is extremely surprising. But the City Spectacular on the other hand, which is one of the, if not THE best event in Dublin only gets 25k!? That’s odd!! They deserve a LOT more!

Dublin, Events, Politics, Society, , , , ,

St. Patrick’s Parade – Lies and Statistics – Round 2

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
St. Patrick’s Parade – Lies and Statistics – Round 2

Irish journalism largely consists of re-printing press releases or even copying from each other and just re-printing what another newspaper already had said. Last week I wrote about the incorrect numbers about parade attendees that every year are spread. 500,000 is the claim, which is actually impossible because the streets of Dublin are not wide enough. And again the same lies were repeated this year: www.rte.ie/news/2012/0317/stpatricksday_ireland.html
www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/thousands-enjoy-inclusive-st-patricks-day-parades-543938.html
www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0317/breaking3.html
This year, I checked myself and found a few interesting facts:
+ Even if you are tall, you can hardly see any pedestrian parade participants if you are further back than 7 people from the parade route boundary.
+ People at the front arrived at 08:00. That is 4 hours before the parade started!
+ While there are LOTS of people in O’Connell Street, the crowds are not more than 5 deep between Christ Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
+ On average there is a depth of significantly less than 30 people (15 on each side of the street) along the parade route. And only about a third of them can see the parade.

And the result? If you can fit a generous 2.5 people per metre and with a depth of 15 people on each side. The 2.7km parade route was lined by a max of 202,500 people and less than half of them (approx. 94500) actually SAW the parade! This is a lot lower than I generously calculated last week: www.joergsteegmueller.com/2012/03/15/st-patricks-parade-lies-and-statistics/
500,000 is impressive, but the realistic 94,500 is not so much!! By the way, there were certainly another thousands of people searching for a suitable viewing position, but they never saw anything, so something should be done! Or is it maybe not a high priority to get people to SEE the parade? Maybe luring thousands into the City Centre and claiming that lots were there is more important?

Dublin, Events, Other, Tourism, , , , ,
 
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