Tenaya Steed
Streets & Stories — Exploring the Intersection of Illustration and Community Narratives in The Liberties, Dublin (Philip Kennedy and Tenaya Steed)
Panel: Learning
Ireland’s National College of Art and Design is located in a former whiskey distillery in the heart of an area of Dublin known as The Liberties. Since the twelfth century, this has been a place where making and creating have been core activities. Today, the area is a vibrant working-class community that is under the pressure of gentrification.
This paper examines how an undergraduate illustration programme participates in heritage-making by giving voice to the stories, experiences and cultural identities of the individuals and communities that inhabit this unique part of the city. Through this process, we ask what value this act might have for both students and the community, and question the responsibilities we have as both illustrators and educators when we navigate the complexities of representation – particularly in a context that continues to be shaped and formed by both immigration and emigration.
Central to this paper is Streets & Stories — a module we have taught for the last two years within our BA Illustration programme. With a strong emphasis on research, this module aims to foster a deeper understanding of the relationship between illustration, community, and place. Fundamentally, it asks students to recognise the role illustration can play in documenting and preserving community narratives.
Interested in uncovering untold stories and overlooked histories, the module takes on a sharper focus within the context of contemporary Dublin. As hotels, co-living spaces and luxury student accommodation erode the original character of this area, there’s a friction between the transient residences and those that are clinging on to remain. As an art college, we sit somewhere between both communities – somehow both permanent and temporary. Within this ambiguity lies the central question of this paper: Why should we be the ones to preserve and disseminate the cultural heritage of this unique place?
Tenaya Steed is a visual artist and fiction writer interested in youth culture and working class heritage. She lectures in BA Illustration at Dublin’s National College of Art and Design. From UFO hoaxes faked with teenagers living in so-called 'culture deserts', to imagined Irish dancing medals for amateur girls of the 90s; her artwork has been supported by Arts Council England, The British Council, and BBC Arts. Her short fiction has been published by The Stinging Fly and won The Michael McLaverty Short Story Award in 2024. She lives and works in Ireland.