Review of Culture Night at Griffith College

History comes alive at Griffith College for Culture Night 2019

Journalism student Dieu-Hang Tran attended Griffith College's Culture Night celebrations and wrote the below review. Thank you to everyone who attended the event!

A review of Culture Night at Griffith College, 20th September

As a part of Culture Night 2019, on 20th September Griffith College enriched every curious mind with a short but engaging tour about the history of the campus.

Though the tour lasted about 20 minutes, it made two hundred years of Dublin history come alive. Each piece of the history was told as a personal experience, in a specific place where the story actually happened. At the beginning of the tour, visitors were brought back to 1835, when the campus was the Richmond Bridewell, a prison building. They were invited to meet a prisoner who told them his story in his own cell, about how cruel the torture and how cold the cell was. The following rooms revealed other distinguished stories: Daniel O’Connell, a nationalist leader who was imprisoned for three months in 1844 and actually had a parade for his release day, or James Stephens, a Fenian leader with his marvellous escape. The tour ends with a conversation of two residents of Wellington Barracks, which was later (as Griffith Barracks) used as emergency housing during the early 1960s.

The tour is visually touching as it gives visitors a different angle to look at the Griffith campus from now on. There were actors and a storyteller who genuinely succeeded in bringing the stories into life. Celly, a visitor of the night, said that the tour was “great” and the buildings were “very historical”. Many visitors from the neighbourhood, students and tourists also shared the same feeling.

The event had been prepared for over a month with effort and responsibility shared between Griffith College’s staff, Culture Night’s organisers, and the actors and actresses. This year marked the second time Griffith College engaged in campus history tour. It would be an honour for Griffith College if we hosted this special history tour in the coming years.