Dose Weekender: From Cork’s underground to the new diaspora

“I think it helps that we’re leaning on some community spaces and public spaces,” says artist and DOSE Collective co-founder Michelle Delea, when asked about how the group’s DOSE Weekender event is coming together, “because a big part of what we want to do is nourish that community, or build that community, and I suppose the easiest way to do it is in public spaces that are kind-of underutilised.”

The community to which Delea refers, and to which DOSE aspires to assembling and facilitating with events across physical and digital spaces, is drawn from the city’s artistic underbelly — from the fringes of the city’s electronic music production and DJing circles, to visual arts, and environmental interventions like walking trails and community five-a-side soccer.

It isn’t necessarily limited to people living locally, either — these communities largely fall within a generation that has been hard-hit by the housing crisis and the resultant social issues, and of the five members of the collective, only two are remaining full-time residents.

These considerations have been a big part of creating something to respond to those needs, but for fellow co-founder Roy Stam, negotiating the current way of things has been a look at some green shoots in the making.

“There’s definitely been a huge increase in the amount of stuff that I’m interested in, that has been happening more and more in Cork again.

“I think even venue-wise, Dali [upstairs at Nudes Bar, Lavitts Quay — [the former Larry Tompkins’] is a new venue that we haven’t used before, it’s a perfect, small space that is suitable for different types of gigs and community events downstairs as well. I think, yeah, it feels to me like there’s been an improvement over the last few years.”

“I think there’s only so much we can kind of claim to create in that space,” ventures Delea, when later asked to talk about DOSE within the city’s wider cultural context. “It’s really clear to us that the artists are there. It’s really clear to us that there’s people who will, y’know, attend events, or pay for tickets to attend events.

“I think, probably the biggest difficulties would be venues [as well as] resources, time, funding, all that. But I think as long as we have those two main components of the artists and the audience, we can try to figure out and facilitate everything else.”

The Weekender’s latest instalment kicks off tonight [Thursday] at PLUGD Records, with a collaborative instalment of Cork Improvised Music Club including Fixity, Mankyy and DJ Sarah McCauley; Friday sees an early social at the venue before the party kicks off in earnest at Dali, with ELLLL and Capricorn heading up the DJ billing.

Saturday veers from a ‘sound walk’ around the city, to an all-ages outdoor gig at TEST SITE, to a second night of Dali action featuring UK outfit Async Figure; Sunday, meanwhile, wraps up with an ‘elite low-level’ five-a-side soccer tournament, featuring teams pulled from visiting scenes all over the country, before the weekend winds down at Barrack Street’s O’sho.

Not too shabby a line-up, and no small feat for organisers.

“We try to keep it, at its core, to get a few local artists we love who are doing their thing, and are up there with our favorite artists in the world, to be honest,” Stam enthuses, “and then getting a good few in from further afield, maybe from the rest of Ireland; trying to reach out to the diaspora as well and try to get people back to play. That’s our focus, but we’ve also kind of expanded to a few bookings from outside that.

“It’s definitely changed a bit over the years, as to how we put the line-ups together, but I think we want to still strike that balance of having our listening things, our dancing things, and then these social-focused events that tie them together. That’s how we built the program this year, I guess. Éist [community radio] is going to be a big part of it, because we’ll be on the radio every morning [‘Tea and DOSED’, 11am-1pm across the weekend, online at eist.radio]... yeah, even just to reach people who might not be able to attend.”

Adds Delea: “There’s people who show up to the football that don’t go to any of the music gigs, or vice versa. It’s curating for how someone might feel on that day; if they do want to sleep in, and just have a more chill one and go home… I think it’s just trying to create different nuances like that, to facilitate people”.

The diaspora outreach aspect of the event is still a key part of its remit, as much for the lads themselves as for returning emigrés, as Delea goes on to explain. “The more dense this whole community network here is, the more attractive it is to come home. A big reason a lot of people come home is because they miss the community that they had, or they need a little boost from it.

“In regards to people who are in really difficult housing situations here, who might not have a choice to be elsewhere, I think it’s also about opening up all those third spaces, knowing a few more people are in the place, or feeling like you’ve more access to more places, for free as well, most of the time.”

“It’s nice just being able to reach out to people who have lived here, or grew up here, who aren’t here, who might want to feel more in touch with the place, or feel a little bit out of touch. 

"I know a good few people who are travelling back for the weekend, or around that time. It’s like Christmastime, everyone’s come home,” laughs Stam.

The weekend afternoon event being an all-ages affair further plays into that inclusivity, with Dubliner Mel Keane and improv outfit GÉIS being part of proceedings — not only for semi-retired sesh heads seeking an afternoon’s reconnection, but as a way into gigs for teenagers in the throes of that wholesale obsession with music.“I know there are lots of people, especially in the city, working on this, but that age group is really important, because that’s also the age group that are on the cusp of becoming students [and they’ll be targets of spaces that will primarily be selling alcohol],” Delea says. “They’re in that in-between space, but then you have younger people and older people.

“So for example, the first TEST SITE event we did, people came with kids, and the kids just lay down, like, panned-out to the music for three hours, so calm. It was just a really lovely thing for parents of all ages to be able to do and still feel like they’re involved in the music scene, without having to get a babysitter and go out for the night and have a few drinks, you can just pull up the buggy to TEST SITE and have gone to three gigs, y’know.

“[In years past] you might also have gotten into the scene, as a teenager, and you might have had, like, sort of an older-brother figure, or a kind of father-figure who’s trained you in a bit, and we’re really conscious of the fact that there’s the fear of that dynamic skipping a generation… you almost lose such connectivity between who you might learn from and who you might teach.

“We’re always learning from people who have been in the scene a while, and we’re always trying to meet people who are kind-of like, ‘alright, I’m really into music, I want to go to this night, that night, those nights, yeah, check out everything’, y’know.”

• DOSE Weekender happens from today, at venues across Cork city centre’s quayside area, including Nudes Bar; PLUGD Records and TEST SITE, with special radio programming also airing at eist.radio.
• Among the artists appearing across the weekend are ELLLL, FIXITY, Async Figure, GÉIS, Anemone and Mel Keane.
• Weekend passes are sold out, but the full programme and per-event tickets are still available at https://ra.co/events/2100731.
• Follow DOSE Collective on Instagram at @dosecork.