Public Domain — Live recording at Bohemian F.C.
Public Domain is the first series from IAF Podcasts, a new platform from the Irish Architecture Foundation for conversations about architecture and the stories that bind people and place.
Starting in October, Public Domain sees IAF going on a national tour across Ireland, meeting people where they are with the urgent conversation about what it means to be public in Ireland today.
Travelling to four cities — Dublin, Limerick, Belfast and Cork — Public Domain brings communities and invited panels together for a series of live conversations, recorded in front of an audience, to discuss and discover the design, meaning and value of public space in their lives today.
Public space is part of everyday life, from the streets, squares, parks, pitches and rooms where we meet and gather to the formal and informal shared spaces of our towns, cities and landscapes. But experiences of public spaces vary between different communities of place and interest. Through the lens of architecture, Public Domain explores who our shared spaces are for, how they are experienced, used and valued, and who has a voice in shaping them.
Across the national tour, Public Domain will work with four specific groups and communities of place and interest through four perspectives: sport, migrants, the queer community, and elders, bringing different forms of knowledge and lived experience into the conversation about architecture and public space.
Together, these conversations will contribute to a national picture of how complex and varied our relationship with public space is today, bringing people's lived experience into the culture of architecture.
Each live conversation will be recorded and subsequently released through IAF Podcasts, allowing the ideas, experiences and stories shared in each city to reach listeners across Ireland and beyond. The National Tour begins in Dublin on 1 October 2026 — full programme and bookings details below.
Public Domain is funded by the Arts Council.
Public Domain — National Tour
Sports | Dublin | 1 October 2026, 7pm
The Spark Lab with Bohemian Football Club and guests.
Public Domain begins in Dublin with a conversation about sport and public space. Join us for a live conversation and recording with Bohemian Football Club and guests, exploring the design, meaning and value of public space in our lives today. As Phibsborough awaits and undergoes significant redevelopment in the coming years, it has often been noted that as a place it lacks any coherent public space or realm. How has a football club become part of the public domain of this part of the city, and what's next for the 15,000 people who are estimated to be served by this place?
Hosted by IAF Director Emmett Scanlon, the conversation will bring together India Ryan, Gav Fahy, Dorothy Smith and Mary P. Corcoran to explore sport, public space and what it means to be public in Ireland today.
Speakers
The Bohemian Cooperatives
India Ryan is Facilities and Space Curation Officer at the Bohemian Cooperatives.
She has a background in Environmental Science and Community Work and previously worked in environmental compliance and regulation. She began volunteering with the team in 2023 before joining staff in 2025. Her role focuses on managing shared learning and community spaces, coordinating volunteers, supporting programme delivery, and maintaining the systems that enable education, participation and day-to-day organisational activity.
1815 FC, Social Football Club
Gavin Fahy is an artist and Director of Football at 1815 Football Club.
1815 Football Club is a DIY Footballing Community founded in 2017 that plays on different free public football pitches every week. Mainly based in Dublin, they also play across the Island of Ireland. Playing a pivotal role in the creation of DIY Clubs in Cork, Belfast, Galway, and through an ongoing collaboration with Glasgow based artist the Secretgroundsman now Glasgow.
Artist
Dorothy Smith is a Visual Artist whose work is concerned with the built environment of public space; its construction, its demolition, decay, accidental sculptural moments; the life cycle of the city; its fugitive and transitory nature.
Her main medium is drawing and these drawings are embedded in the geographical and social space of the city where she lives.
Her work explores our public realm and forces active in city creation. They are a means of noticing and thinking about the structures and infrastructure we create to enable and support our collective lives.
Her practice is rooted in studio based work with a keen interest in embracing contexts beyond those of the studio and gallery space. She works in a wide range of contexts including public art projects, curation, talks, publications, community based work as well as exhibiting her detailed structural line drawings. She is interested in the complex social space which the artist inhabits in greater society. She is a board member of Phizzfest Community and Arts Festival, is Curator in Residence in Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda and is an associate member of the RHA (Royal Hibernian Academy).
Dorothy holds an MA in Visual Arts Practices from the Institute of Art Design and Technology Dun Laoghaire, a Degree Fine Art Painting from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and a Post Graduate Diploma in Arts Administration from University College Dublin.
Sociology Professor Emeritus
Mary P. Corcoran is a Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Maynooth University where she spent most of her academic career.
Her research and teaching interests lie primarily in the fields of urban sociology, food and sustainability, public cultures and the sociology of migration, areas in which she has published widely over the last four decades. She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin (1983), and of Columbia University, New York where she completed her doctorate in 1991. Mary has a long history of collaborating with civil society groups, community organisations, artists and arts practitioners to generate interdisciplinary perspectives on lived experience.
Mary currently serves as a Director on the Citizens Information Board; the all island Institute for Public Health and the Liberties Community Development Project.
Coming Soon:
Migrants | Limerick | 29 October 2026, 7pm
Queer | Belfast | 17 November 2026, 7pm
Elders | Cork | December 2026
Listen to IAF Podcasts
Public Domain conversations will be recorded as part of the national tour and subsequently released as podcast episodes, extending the conversations beyond each city and its live audience.
