Dear LinkedIn Connections
I wish to extend the hand of friendship to you should you take two minutes out of your day to have watched our short video flyover which we created ourselves together using our Adobe skills.
My name is Andrew O’Connell and along with co-founder Eddie Starrs we set up the St. Teresa’s Gardens Folklore Project. Our sole aim was to capture and catalogue the photographic history of St. Teresa’s Garden's life over seven decades. Before its final demolition this Summer. Once a thriving community of over One Thousand residents. Today all that remains are the last two blocks that stand awaiting the claw of death.
Both Eddie and I spent our lives growing up in the community of St. Teresa’s Gardens. We are lifelong friends who both completed our Leaving certs in 1992. An achievement we are both very proud of given the failure in those decades of so many young people to fall through the cracks in the system.
Who better to produce this piece of work than us! We have the lived experience. Through the best of times and the worst of times in the flats, we bear witness to many of the darkest moments to beset the community having lived through the Heroin epidemic of the 80s and 90s. Yet we were some of the lucky ones. We survived. We had to be tough, we had resilience, we had to be clever, and we had to be the ones to do this! So many of our peers never got that opportunity. So many were lost to Heroin.
After 20 years of failed regeneration promises, we decided in 2014 to create a virtual online community to connect the past with the present. At the same time, Dublin City Council’s contractors started to demolish the empty blocks. The once-thriving community was now being scattered to the four corners of the city with no replacement housing in sight.
During the years to follow we used the Facebook platform to reconnect with over 3000 former residents who have family connections to the old community. We also set out to build an archive of images and stories for future generations to refer to when they look back on this period of history in the Donore parish area.
In 2020 with the onset of the COVID pandemic we worked away via Facebook Live on a weekly basis to present a weekly show where residents could connect in. It allowed us to support them if they were struggling to come to terms with the lockdown. Throughout late 2021 and now into early 2022 we are busy finalising the chapter details for our Book “Farewell to the Gardens”. It is scheduled in early 2023 for printing.
If you are a local businessperson or company with an interest in supporting our local project, we would be extremely appreciative of your assistance. Our initial print run is 500 copies. The book will be made up of between 200/260 pages cover over 20 chapters of life in and around the St. Teresa’s Gardens. Our budget costs are set at €10,000. The bulk of this going to printing and a smaller portion towards a photo exhibition and launch in the local community centre on Donore Avenue. If you feel you can be of help with these costs, please get in contact.
Thank You for your time
Andrew & Eddie