A tiny community in Rathmines dares to have the vision—and the will—to go against the norm. Kate Demolder writes.
Dublin is an undeniably creative city, but fewer and further between are we seeing that at play.
As usual, we can blame capital: Creative hubs rarely provide the kind of financial return franchise food places and international hotels do.
But what's left for locals, then? A series of bland foyers, restaurants taken straight from the American Midwest and a city no longer built for the people who live there, but for paying customers. Which is why it’s genuinely exhilarating to encounter a space running counter to that, one not easily summarised in a tagline.
On Ardee Road, behind Rathmines’ Main Street, sits a bustling neighbourhood for creative types, one that’s expanding with ease.
It all started in December. "We moved here from Smithfield around Christmas," Shimmy Marcus, Artistic Director of Bow Street Academy, the National Screen Acting School of Ireland, says.
"As an arts organisation, we had to find somewhere with the right kind of community atmosphere. We teach our students that the environment and how you relate to it are as important to acting as the lines you read. It feeds back into the work you do and how you connect. And similarly, everyone in the neighbourhood seems to share that mindset."
Segotia – a Hiberno-English term of endearment meaning 'dear friend' – is the name of the new yoga and art studio and cultural space next door. It also opened in December with the desire of creating something rare: an oasis of calm and safety where people can move, create and connect.
Founded by lifelong partners Karen and Derek Noonan, Segotia was born of a desire for more.
"It struck me that Dublin was always being recognised as a centre for the arts, and yet the music and arts venues we’d loved for years were all being hollowed out," Derek says. "I was a solicitor coming to the end of my maternity leave when Derek was really thinking about it, and I really leaned on yoga to get me through the stress of that time. I floated the idea of a studio to help people find connection and community, and here we are today."
Today, Segotia runs art exhibitions, ceramics classes, art lessons, holistic treatments and rents out studio and meeting spaces for creatives. Plans for courtyard food trucks, a farmers market and coffee vendors also aim to envelop new faces with the safety they're hellbent to provide.
"Yoga and art can feel so inaccessible or daunting to people, whereas we’re hoping that for those who have felt sidelined, they can maybe try a coffee, try a sauna, then spot a beginner class and think, well, sure, listen, I’ll give it a go."
Recognisable sauna spots are popping up all over the country of late, almost as if the Finnish trend arrived suddenly and all at once.
However, Fad Saoil, owned and run by former Irish rugby union player Steve Crosbie, was the first to secure a mobile sauna licence in Ireland, resulting in a real homegrown hit. Karen and Derek chose Fad Saoil to join them as neighbours on Ardee Road as they wanted to create a community of like-minded, people-focused individuals.
"We’re so grateful to them because those who live in densely populated areas like here need places to relax and take a break too, not just those who live by the coast," Crosbie says.
Fad Saoil opened their Rathmines branch in January with sauna and ice bath facilities that have recently expanded due to demand. Regulars of their services range from yoga teachers to aspiring actors to accountants to gym-goers.
"It’s like a comedy skit most days," he says. "You get all these people who would never really share an environment conversing together. It’s why we call saunas the new pub."
Crosbie insists he’s in the people business, something that feels rarer and rarer in an Ireland commercialised. Business plans like his wouldn’t exist without collaborative communities like the one on Ardee Road, he says.
"That feeling of collaborative community, where people really mean what they say when they create a service for others, completely transcends the service and the acts these teams provide. Anyone involved knows how much this means to a person."
Echoing this is Marcus. "Businesses like these are built from the inside out. They’re not corporate ideas dreamt up in a marketing department. And if it's not for everyone, that's fine. There is no problem. We're not trying to sell you anything, we're just creating it."
Cultural capital has always been Ireland’s soft power weapon of choice, but with the rising cost of living and the isolation hangover from the pandemic, the role of community has been lost to the capitalist system, contributing to real-world repercussions; one-fifth of the people in Ireland have confessed to feeling lonely some or all of the time, with three in five reporting an experience of depression*.
Despite the rise in technologies and systems created to provide more leisure time, our fetishisation of work has served to highlight the fractures that have long been building in our society, many of which are in direct contrast to a balanced and healthy central nervous system.
The antidote to capitalism is community, something that Ardee Road has in droves. To be confronted with these thoughts as you walk in is strange, assured, unbothered and exquisite. In that way, it feels more like home than anything could, and more like a need than you might have been prepared for.
A yoga class at Segotia, sauna at Fad Saoil or acting class at Bow Street all feel important and grown up in a way that franchised experiences never do. Instead of having the oppressive feel we associate with organised fun, life on Ardee Road boasts a sense of poise that can only come from a fully formed vision, even if the area thrums with the traffic, music and sounds of schoolchildren.
So often, particularly in neo-capitalist culture, we are burdened with the idea of 'should'. What we should be doing with our time, body, energy and abilities.
Ardee Road, in all its splendour, feels more focused on the 'could' – how we could be spending our days if our main focus was to enjoy them. I noticed, when leaving recently, that I’d only previously felt this way during experiences in other cities.
A sort of wistful joy arose in me, in which I longed for this lovely life to exist for Dublin residents. And with that, I realised: now, it actually does.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
If you have been affected by issues raised in this story, please visit: www.rte.ie/helplines.
