Go Niche

IF YOU’VE got designs on a trip up to Dublin this summer, make the effort to get there in June.

To celebrate 2011 as Irish Year of Craft, all sorts of crafty events are taking place across the city next month. These include everything from demonstrations and exhibitions to hands-on workshops and even the opportunity to lunch with some of our best known, home-grown design gurus.

Designers and craft workers from jewellery and ceramics to fashion and printing are throwing their workshop doors open across the city, too, on June 10th for a once-off chance to get in behind the scenes and see how they do what they do.

Organiser Dublin City Enterprise Board is hoping visitors to the city will make the most of the free bike scheme to cycle from door-to-door and have even produced a downloadable map to keep you on course.

Given that participants are promising once-off discounts for the event too, expect to see bicycle scenes reminiscent of Beijing.

If you miss that, don’t worry. Craft demonstrations will take place every Saturday in June in the Kilkenny Shop on Nassau Street.

An exhibition of Dais, a "visual poem" by Sonya Lennon, is on from June 1st to 14th at the EU Commission building on Dawson Street, while "lunch with the masters" – Paul Costelloe, Peter O'Brien and Deirdre McQuillan of The Irish Times– takes place at St Stephen's Green on June 10th.

Other events, including questions and answers sessions, jewellery-making workshops and even a demo designed to get you potato printing your own greeting cards, are on offer, which means you could leave the capital with not just happy memories but a brand new hobby too.

* designerdublin.ie