A Finglas Story – a three-part documentary about the Northside suburb – has received a ‘thumbs up’ from the community at the heart of the programme.
Made by multi-award-winning filmmaker Declan Cassidy – himself a native of Finglas, the three half-hour episodes chart the history of the suburb from the mid 1900s, when it was a sleepy, rural village of three or four hundred people, through the Dublin Corporation housing schemes of the 50’s and 70’s, which saw the population explode to a peak of over 53,000 in 1979 and to the present day when, in a multicultural Finglas, one out of six inhabitants do not class themselves as Caucasian Irish.
The mini-series features interviews with notable Finglassians such as author and poet Dermot Bolger (pictured above) and RTE news presenter Samantha Libreri as well as a score written by Tony Barrett of the much loved Finglas band “The Brilliant Trees”.
It had its first public screening last month, at a Dublin City Council-funded premiere in the historic St Canice’s Church of Ireland, attended by local dignitaries and those who had taken part in the making of the programme.
It was then broadcast on Dublin Community Television (DCTV), which is available to Virgin Media subscribers on Channel 802, and is now available on YouTube where all three episodes can be viewed at https://youtube.com/@tvie
“My Dad was an artist and community activist in Finglas,” explained Cassidy, “and it rubbed off on all of us.
“The second episode of ‘A Finglas Story’ is called ‘Growing Pains’ and it covers the period when we were growing up.
“The population had boomed but facilities were slow to follow, so there were a lot of teething problems and the media latched onto that.
“I remember being told that if we wanted to have a chance with a job application, we should give the address of someone who lived outside of Finglas.
“This TV series covers all of that, but I feel that Finglas came through stronger for all of that, and you get a real sense of a community that stood together in this programme.”
‘A Finglas Story’ was funded by Coimisiún na Meán under the Sound and Vision initiative, with a further contribution from Finglas Credit Union and broadcast support from DCTV.
“It wouldn’t have been possible to make the series without that support,” reveals Cassidy.
“The Sound and Vision scheme allows people like me to make programmes that are important but not commercial and DCTV provide a platform where any community individual or group has the chance to get their programme broadcast on television.
“With social media it’s hard to know what to believe and who to trust these days, so I feel that community media has never had such an important role to play in letting communities speak for themselves.”
The TVIE YouTube channel that is now showing all three ‘A Finglas Story’ episodes is newly launched and has slowly but surely started to gather followers.
“While DCTV provides an amazing service, not everyone has Virgin Media, so TVIE allows me to make the programmes that I produce available to anyone, anywhere with an internet connection.
“There are Finglassians all over the world, and I’ve been getting feedback from far flung places since ‘A Finglas Story’ appeared on the channel.”
Another recent project of Cassidy’s is “Romancing Ireland” – a six-part climate action food series that sees non Irish nationals challenged to cook the favourite dish of their home countries, but restricted to using only Irish ingredients.
“In the last available census, there were five non-Irish national communities that were growing – Brazilian, French, Italian, Romanian and Spanish – and they are all Latin, or ‘romance’ language speakers. That gave us the name – Romancing Ireland.”
The first episode of ‘Romancing Ireland’ premieres on the TVIE YouTube channel at 3pm on Sunday, October 15 with the subsequent episodes premiering at the same time for the next five Sundays.
“My hope for TVIE is that communities and individuals all over Ireland will start using it as a voice to share what is important to them.
“I see it as an online community channel for today’s multicultural Ireland.”