Where there is power, there is resistance  (Foucault 1978:95)

The women of Dublin’s Oliver Bond flats

Text by Lidia K. C. Manzo - Photos by Pierluigi Cattani Faggion

Women of Oliver Bond House: Everyday Community Warriors ❤️ (From the left: Elizabeth O’Connor, Jannette Cullen, Chris Lynch and Dallal Bounekdja).

Thank you Oliver Bond residents group and Robert Emmet CDP for enabling this project. CITY-OF-CARE looks at the lived experiences of solidarity and support developed by the people and for the people of Oliver Bond, and by women particularly. And thanks to the powerful Gayle Cullen Doyle in the photo at a flats gate.

So, if I ask you more directly what does it mean Oliver Bond for you? “For me it’s home”. Meet Natasha O’Keeffee so proud to pose for #cityofcare outside her flat ❤️

Understanding the mechanism of women life practices of networked solidarity and community empowerment in Oliver Bond House is crucial to approach the issue of care beyond its dominant notion of simply labor or simply love. Jannette Cullen posing at a flats gate almost like her daughter Gayle!

CITY-OF-CARE strives to explore the role of women not only as a social group but rather as powerful contributors of change, who possess specific knowledge and skills to effectively making disadvantaged urban communities more resilient in their struggle to combat housing affordability crisis, insecurity and exclusion. Many thanks to Elizabeth, Liz, O’Connor for posing!

This is a strong based community, really strong and hopefully the regeneration will give everybody the lift that Oliver Bond deserves. Meet Lynnette Lyons, sitting on the couch outside her flat.

Austin Campbell, Director of Robert Emmet Community Development Project, poses in his office and recalls the events that led residents to fight for the Oliver Bond House regeneration forum... like the consultation delivered in 2020: "every big project has its consultation, but in a way... it was like the lipstick on the gorilla. It's just something that's done, like nothing kind of happens and we were getting a little bit suspicious, there was no response. All of the same problems persisted. So, we designed a survey and gave 12 Oliver Bond residents group we were supporting to distribute, and they gave it out to every household in Oliver Bond house, around 400 households. And the results that came back were just, I guess unsurprising, but at the same time, completely unacceptable: 83% of households said that they had dampness issues, attained 54% of people had a medical condition that would be affected by dampness. So, based on that as a CDP we're supporting the community, I believe we have a responsibility to offer the residents with the opportunity to bring it to the media in a constructive way".

About the “We are sick of waiting”
media campaign

Oliver Bond Residents Group publicly launched a media campaign on June 30, 2021 to highlight the substandard housing conditions in their flats following a complete lack of appropriate communication from Dublin City Council on the issue of improvement and regeneration of the complex. Here some photographs taken by Lidia K.C. Manzo during the event organized by Oliver Bond residents group with the support of Robert Emmet CDP at the football pitch!

 

City of Care

This project has received funding from the European Commission Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie

Individual Fellowship (G.A.890603). 

Please cite as: Manzo, L.K.C. (2019) CITY-OF-CARE, the University of Milan, Italy.

©2021 Lidia K.C. Manzo - Pierluigi Cattani Faggion - Alison Fernandes