A NUMBER OF post boxes around Dublin have been painted red in advance of next weekend’s 1916 centenary celebrations.
Just a handful of the boxes have been changed so far – including ones on Stephen’s Green, at Liberty Hall and in the Mount Street area.
The project, which began over the weekend, appears to have piqued the curiousity of people in the city…
Although some are raising questions as to whether red is the most appropriate colour to paint them:
Boxes all over the country, of course, were red until Irish independence.
The An Post website details that ”one of the first acts of the new Irish Government was to order that green would be the new colour for Post Office letter boxes”.
As public affairs manager of the postal service Angus Laverty explained to us this morning, the project is part of their GPO Witness History project for 2016.
The freshly-painted boxes display a word and a text number. Passers-by can send the word to access special video clips of what would have been happening in the area during the Rising.
An An Post photocall to launch the project took place at Stephen’s Green this morning, Laverty said.
Asked whether he was expecting any criticism of the project, he said the initiative was aimed at helping tell the story of 1916 and that “people shouldn’t get too upset”.
Asked whether consultations on changing the post boxes had taken place with the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, which is heading up the centenary events, he said he was “not aware” of any such process.
The Department of Communications had been notified in advance, he said.
The Witness History exhibition, described as “a highly interactive and immersive exhibition which will focus on the 1916 Rising, the aftermath of this rebellion and also how Ireland has developed since” opens at the GPO on O’Connell Street next Tuesday, 29 March.
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