Meet the woman bringing ‘cultural confidence' to Dublin

Irish Times

5 days ago

Down in the basement of 14 Henrietta Street, the social-history museum that captures both the splendour and squalor of Dublin's past, Iseult Dunne is looking to the future.
As chief executive of Dublin City Council Culture Company, Dunne's responsibilities include the running of the award-winning attraction, which brings visitors on a journey through the Georgian grandeur and subsequent tenement-era poverty once found within its flaking walls.
But her tasks stretch well beyond it. The not-for-profit company is owned and funded by
Dublin City Council
, having originated as a pilot project at the council in 2016 before being formally established in 2018.
Following the launch of a new five-year strategy this summer, the company is ready to put its head above the parapet and explain why it wants to do more to instil what it calls 'cultural confidence' across the city.
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'We're confident that the work we do is special and needed, that the city is benefiting from that, and that both people from the city and people visiting the city are benefiting from the way we bring them access to culture,' says Dunne.
Identifying, then breaking down, the often-invisible barriers that deter people from 'trying the thing that they've never tried' is central to her mission.
The company runs a busy programme called Culture Club, which offers free talks and tours designed to introduce people to cultural spaces. But when Dunne tells 14 Henrietta Street visitors about these other events, they will occasionally reply that they have never been to a museum, even though they have just been inside one. They don't class the house as a museum because it doesn't alienate them, she says.
The exterior of 14 Henrietta Street
'So then you kind of go, 'Oh, why do museums alienate you?' Because I know museums; all they want to do is bring you in. They're not trying to alienate people. But something about them does sometimes.'
So Culture Club, which it runs in partnership with cultural institutions and venues around Dublin, was set up to help remove barriers as varied as 'I didn't have anybody to go with' and 'I didn't know what to expect', she says. The tours and talks, which must be booked in advanced, are followed by tea – all part of the process of encouraging return visits.
'We have, unfortunately, a waiting list every month,' says Dunne. 'So, for example, if you wanted to book one for every day in August, we wouldn't let you. We can't, as we have to try and have equal access. We have to manage it a little bit and make sure we have first-timers.'
Kilmainham Mill. Photograph: Dublin City Council
One upcoming Culture Club event is a guided tour that brings people into Kilmainham Mill, which dates from the early 1800s and fell into dereliction after its closure in 2000. The council now owns the site and has embarked on stabilisation and repair works that include the removal of asbestos and Japanese knotweed.
'In the meantime we can open up part of it for a little look-see, and restrict it to where it's safe to go,' says Dunne.
The company is making a documentary about the history of the mill and the people who worked there, and it will launch it as part of September's Dublin Festival of History, which it organises in partnership with Dublin City Libraries.
A site such as Kilmainham Mill, once it is ready to be open to the public, could eventually fall under the company's bailiwick, just as 14 Henrietta Street does.
At the moment, the only other building it operates is Richmond Barracks, now home to Culture Connects.
Under this programme, people of all ages are invited to try out activities such as painting, creative writing, dance, music, choir, genealogy and many others, with options ranging from once-off workshops to more regular classes.
Barriers of geography are common, says Dunne. Most people 'function locally', or along their usual desire paths, and don't want to traipse into town or over to another part of town to do stuff.
'So we think we should be doing something like Culture Connects citywide. We think there's an interest citywide, among Dubliners, and also within the council.
'We definitely have our eye on a few places, let me say that.'
The company isn't involved in long-term infrastructure planning – that's a matter for the council itself.
'We really only want to work on how to make culture more accessible for people.'
And as it is wholly owned by the council, any expansion of its footprint is contingent upon the priorities of the local authority.
'We have to want it together,' says Dunne.
But the culture company's funding has already grown in tandem with its activities in recent years. In pre-pandemic 2019, for instance, its total income was €1.6 million – with €1.4 million of this coming from the council – and it employed just 15 people.
Its most recent company accounts show that its income reached €3.8 million in 2024, with the council contributing €3.4 million. About €275,000 was generated by its box office, with smaller sums earned from venue hire and merchandise.
The company's annual budget is now €3.5 million-€4 million, says Dunne, and it employs 45 people, not including either seasonal tour guides or the six historians-in-residence and 14 artists-in-residence it supports across the city.
The company is running creative residencies in four Dublin sports and recreation centres. Even availing of nearby services such as local gyms can be daunting for people the first time, she says.
Iseult Dunne at 14 Henrietta Street, Dublin.
Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill
She describes herself as a 'big believer' in the power of plain language to help people feel that places are more accessible, 'more me'.
Dunne, who has led the company since its inception, is also conscious that people already embrace culture 'in their own way, and in ways that we don't know'. Her approach is definitely not about insisting upon defining culture as 'the arts' or telling them they should be doing something they're not, she says.
'If anyone came at me like that, that would be a big turn-off, right?'
Instead, the idea is to 'add options to the menu'.
The company's new strategy document opens with a quote from musician Brian Eno, who defines culture as 'everything we don't have to do', including the 'gratuitous stylistic extras' we add to all the stuff we do have to do.
'You have to eat, but you don't have to decorate elaborately prepared curries with silver leaf. You have to move around, but you don't have to dance,' the quote concludes.
Dunne highlights the joy and value of 'seeing or hearing someone else approach something in a different way'. After our interview, she has a meeting with Fiona Harrington, artist-in-residence at 14 Henrietta Street, whose lacemaking takes inspiration from the patterns and shapes surfacing in the layers of paint, wallpaper and plaster that surround us.
'It's a whole different way of thinking about these walls,' says Dunne. 'That's worth getting out of bed for.'
Former residents of 14 Henrietta Street, Jane Lynch, John Horrigan and Peter Brannigan.
Photograph: Cyril Byrne
The company's guides gave tours to more than 38,000 people at 14 Henrietta Street last year, and the company is keen to do more at the site without Disneyfying it.
'We're currently about to launch – don't judge me – a soap.'
But this soap – on which it is working with soapmaker Clarke's of Dublin – will be anchored in the remarkable history of the house, she says. Some former residents worked in local soap factories, while the smell of carbolic soap has lingered long in the memories of those who lived there.
'We think we can offer more things at this museum, but at the same we don't want to turn it into a funfair. Everything we do has to be of the place and of the history of the people who lived here.'
As for the company's wider ambitions to extend its presence and programmes such as Culture Connects across Dublin, her message is clear: 'We're not finished.'