Dublin, 1916 … Phoenix, 2016

It’s a long, long way to Dublin from Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Billing itself as “A Small Slice of Ireland in the Desert,” the Arizona Irish Cultural Center (AZICC) attempts to bridge that distance by providing residents of Phoenix and the surrounding area access to range of resources related to Ireland and the Irish diaspora. Located on Central Avenue near downtown, the AZICC complex is a striking architectural anomaly surrounded by bleak mid-century modern office buildings, luxury high-rise condominiums, the Buckminster Fuller-inspired Phoenix Central Library, and the equally unexpected Japanese Friendship Garden of Phoenix. If these environs are decidedly un-Irish, the complex itself has attempted to recreate the look and feel of the Emerald Isle with a replica of a Famine-era Irish cottage, a Great Hall containing a fireplace constructed of stones from County Clare, and, towering over all this, the McClelland Irish Library, modeled on a twelfth-century Norman Castle. These simulacral structures, with their evocative forms and quaint touches, promise to transport visitors to a different world, far from the heat and hustle of downtown Phoenix, where they might connect or reconnect with another way of life, another set of values. Like many other Irish cultural centers around the United States, the AZICC promotes the heritage of Celtic peoples by giving place to a full calendar of cultural programming: language courses, book discussions, genealogy tutorials, film screenings, dance performances, music showcases, traveling exhibitions, and even a Bloomsday Beerfest.