About

Hope Started in 1984 as a fanzine reader starting a band and trying to get gigs it then morphed into something after we put the Membranes on in Dublin in 1986.

Other bands then looked to come over to Ireland and letters were exchanged with great eagerness. Anhrefn, the fflaps, DI and The Vandals quickly followed and then we heard about Fugazi. It is a story in itself but after many phone calls Fugazi agreed to let Ireland feature on their first European tour. Many bands then looked to come over so we decided to put a name on the poster, to try and let people identify with what we were doing. That name was Hope.

Fast forward to 1994 and Hope became Hope Collective when more people got involved. Weekly meetings were held and our gigs became events. We would pass around popcorn, leaflets—anything that encouraged and welcomed people. The idea of the gigs was that we were people not promoters and bands and audience were equal. At our gigs there were no supports just people helping out. The list of gigs are here

At one of our weekly meetings it was suggested we try and put a book together to Document our activities. Years later and many many hours of work that book saw the light of day. It was decided to have a page for each gig, each show could tell a story and each story had a vegan recipe to accompany it. We wanted to let people know about what we did, about what was important to us, and more importantly how they could do it too. This book was self-published in Ireland under the name Document: A Story of Hope and subsequently Soft Skull Press in the US released it under the name Please Feed Me

in 2017 we published out a second book called In Concert . We felt after seeing the images of humans trying to escape war that we would reach out to our community to show solidarity and try and raise some money.  It started life as a fanzine (Hope *2 ) where our punk rock friends shared their favourite gigs but extended into a book (In Concert) where we put all over 100 contributions from the Irish Music Community together.
Available here

Our next venture is a book for NHS Charities Trust, Great Gig Memories, again spawning form Hope *2 but this time we have reached out to over 200 of our friends in the Punk rock Community to tell of their favourite gig.  This book is now available.
************************

hope, el presidente and the wild hearted outsider discovered punk rock at various times in our lives.  One thing is for sure, it has made a lasting impression on us and has helped shape our lives.  We want to share some experiences with you here and document a cultural movement