New Dubliners

Elisa Capitanio is Head of Design at social media intelligence agency Storyful. She also runs her own independent abstract art business. Here’s her experience of working in Dublin: A master of both digital design and abstract art Elisa Capitanio came to Ireland more than a decade ago completely by chance. Living in Italy, she longed for a change of pace, so she left her home in Bergamo and moved to London. Dublin came calling with an opportunity for Elisa to try her hand at being a web designer, so she packed her bags for a second time and moved country again. Since then, Irelan

If you went to school in Ireland in the late twentieth century you’d have been taught a lot about our nation’s struggle against imperial oppression. But other nations still in the clutches of various empires got short shrift from our school books. Latvia? Estonia? Lithuania? If we even knew they existed, we didn’t trouble to separate them in our minds from Russia. Sure weren’t they all just the Soviet Union – where girls fell in love with their tractors and unlucky dogs got sent into space? Indra Variakojiene didn’t have a tractor. In fact before she came to Ireland she worked as a chemical analyst – in a laboratory attached to a flour mill in Lithuan

Since 2014, Blas Cafe has been serving some of the most flavourful brunches and lunches north of the river Liffey. Think breakfast baps, toasties, eggs Benedict – and everything in between. Based in The Chocolate Factory, which once manufactured Toblerones and Mint Crisps, Blas Café’s neighbours include an eclectic mix of startups and individual creatives who share its coworking space. Setting up Blas Café played a big part in the old industrial building’s transformation. And its founder, Hassan Lemtouni, is extremely proud of what he ha