The Barricade Inn was a squatted social centre in the centre of Dublin. During the peak of its activity over the summer of 2015 hundreds of people were involved in putting on events in the space that thousands of people attended. In this audio we talk to three WSM members who were involved in opening up and running The Barricade about what happened there and what lessons they drew from the experience.
Dublin: Abandoned prison occupied by squatters who want to open it as art / community space – State says NO!
What may have been the largest squat in Europe, at Grangegorman in Dublin, was recently evicted for the second time. A major hardship for the 30 people living there but one that was rapidly improved on when many of them moved a kilometre down the road and occupied a long abandoned prison.
The Debtors Prison on Halston street was built in 1794 and actually lies between Halston Street and Green Street. The ‘U’ shaped 3 storey building is built of granite and limestone and was built as a luxury prison for the wealthy who had run up gambling debts. There were 33 such rooms / cells which were rented either furnished or unfurnished. If you weren’t rich you were thrown into the basement, Dublin at the time had 5 debtors prison and this one alone could accommodate 100.
It later saw use as a police barracks, both the RIC and the Garda, and in the 1960s for public housing. After that it was threatened with demolition in the period when many historic buildings and indeed squares were pulled down to make way for ‘development’ before being leased by Students Against the Destruction of Dublin, a campaigning group formed by architecture students in the 1980s and then handed back to the Office of Public Works (OPW). [Read More]
Dublin: Prison squatted
The Debtors Prison on Halston Street has recently been occupied by a collective of artists. The prison has been left empty and has fallen into disrepair. The occupants are currently seeking support and cooperation from the organisation responsible for the maintenance of the building, the Office of Public Works, as well as the local community. The occupants have stated that their intention is to restore the building and open the ground floor for exhibitions and walking tours which would highlight social injustices from the past until today. The occupants are hard at work preparing the space and launching projects.
[Note mainstream media is reporting the squat has already been given a week’s notice of eviction]
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