Your Tenement Memories in 2024

Your Tenement Memories is a series of ongoing conversations with people across the city that gathers memories of tenement life in Dublin for 14 Henrietta Street. By listening and talking with visitors, historians, local residents and their families and through the knowledge of others, the museum continues to discover new stories, gathering memories and adding to the museum’s collection and visitor experience.

This oral history project, captures living memories of tenement life in Dublin. Through this project, we have engaged with individuals and communities across Dublin and the suburbs since 2019.

In 2024, we continued to meet with former residents of 14 Henrietta Street and recorded their memories. We heard people’s rich and diverse memories north of the river from Henrietta street to Nelson Street, Lower Gardiner Street, Dorset Street and Ashford Street, and south of the river from Clarendon Street and Golden Lane. We also learned about families who relocated to Ballyfermot, Donnycarney, Cabra and Finglas.

As part of connecting Your Tenement Memories with the tours of 14 Henrietta Street, we invited previous participants of the project to come in to meet with our Tour Guides, Visitor Experience and Engagement team. This gave our teams the opportunity to ask questions about life in Henrietta street directly from those who had experienced it.

As part of sharing learning through Your Tenement Memories, we invited some former Henrietta Street residents to meet the children attending our 14 Henrietta Street Summer Camp. This shared our learnings from Your Tenement Memories through our Education programme and also enabled us to reconnect with the participants who have contributed to the oral history project.

Many Your Tenement Memories participants and their families returned to 14 Henrietta Street for our annual Neighbours Day in September. It was a sociable afternoon of conversation, song and reminiscences which created the opportunity for former neighbours from Henrietta Street to reconnect after more than 50 years.

This year we had new opportunities to share our work on Your Tenement Memories. We were accepted to speak at the Oral History Network Ireland annual conference in Derry in June and invited back to speak at their “Celebrating Community Oral Heritage" event in November. We were also delighted to present our work in 14 Henrietta Street and the Your Tenement Memories programme at the ICOM International Committee for Collecting Conference in Amsterdam in October. This conference enabled us to connect with other museums who collect oral histories and share our practice at an international level. 

We have also shared our experience of the Your Tenement Memories project internationally through an article “Collecting Memory: 14 Henrietta Street and Oral History” written by our Social Historian Donal Fallon. This article highlights how oral history has played a crucial role in shaping the museum's guided tours and programming. You can find the article here.

We are looking forward to continuing to develop this project in 2025 and to have the opportunity to engage with more people. If you, or someone you know, would be interested in telling your story, please contact us to arrange a chat with a member of our team at memories@14henriettastreet.ie or call us on 01 524 0383.