Highlights from 2025 at The Digital Hub
The Digital Hub closes out the year with 57 member companies and organisations on our campus. Since January, we welcomed five new members and our multipurpose spaces — The Bank, Bay 1, iD8 Studio and Studio 2 — have hosted thousands of visitors at various events, from meetings and training courses to theatre rehearsals, art exhibitions and more.
Below are some of the main highlights from The Digital Hub across 2025.
Our Members
January: Bloop Group is a monthly get-together for electronic musicians and producers to hang out, test kit and make music. Bloop Groop was developed by Digital Hub member, Caroline Swords, with the mission to have fun, learn and make music together in a low-stress, playful environment. Twenty-seven people attended the second Bloop Groop in January and they celebrated their one-year anniversary in December.
January: Scribble & Stone picked up the ‘Best Product — Jewellery’ award at Showcase Ireland’s Showcase Awards 2025. The Irish ethical jewellery company received the award for the excellence of their products. The annual awards help to elevate the most exceptional products to a trade audience, both at home and abroad.
January: Emma Fitzpatrick of 11 PR and Events was selected as one of Ireland’s best in the PR industry as part of DMG Media Ireland’s 40 Under 40 series. Emma is the managing director of 11 PR and Events, a leading public relations and events management firm based at The Digital Hub.
February: Accessible.ie, an online platform helping businesses avoid fines of up to €60,000 and comply with new EU accessibility legislation, was launched. The platform enables companies to conduct accessibility audits to identify barriers that may prevent individuals with disabilities from using their websites or apps. It was established by Xwerx, a leading User Experience design agency, based at The Digital Hub.
February: Curious Dog Films production of ‘Born That Way’ won the ‘Best Irish Documentary’ award at the Dublin International Film Festival, where it also had its world premiere. The documentary film, directed by Éamon Little, covers Patrick Lyndon’s final year, in which he looks back on a fascinating life, lays the ground for posthumous, ‘green-shoot’ projects and prepares for death.
March: The Digital Hub welcomed its first new member of 2025, Brokentalkers. Brokentalkers are a multi-award winning Dublin based theatre company who have built a reputation both at home and internationally as one of Ireland’s most innovative and original theatre companies.
March: Neuromod closed a €10m equity financing to accelerate the availability of its tinnitus treatment device, Lenire. The financing was oversubscribed and was led by existing investors, backing Neuromod’s mission to advance tinnitus care for patients globally. More than 100 clinics throughout the USA treat tinnitus patients with Lenire, which expanded in Europe with clinics in fourteen countries using the device.
March: Akara co-founder Niamh Donnelly, won first prize at the startup pitch competition organised by the European Innovation Council (EIC) during their Innovation Day in Berlin. She was one of eight finalists selected from a competitive pool of EIC portfolio companies. As part of her prize, Niamh represented Akara at the prestigious EIC Summit in Brussels in April.
May: The Digital Hub welcomed two new members, Codema and Dublin Camera Club. Dublin Camera Club is the largest camera club in Ireland bringing together photographers of all ages and abilities. It is a non-profit organisation, run by its members for its members. Codema is dedicated to working on behalf of Dublin’s local authority members to promote public good in the areas of energy and climate mitigation.
May: Kavaleer Productions were honoured at the Irish Animation Awards for their series ‘Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese’, winning ‘Best Animated Kids Series (over 6 years old)’ and the ‘Kids Choice for Best Animated Kids Series (over 6 years old)’ as voted by the children of Hazelwood Integrated Primary and Nursery in Belfast. Kavaleer also received seven nominations for ‘Wonder Pets: In the City!’.
May: Visual Artist and Editor at Rolling News, Eamonn Farrell, received The McCann Fitzgerald Portraiture Award for his art image ‘I Am Human!’ at a ceremony in Dublin for the 195th RHA Annual Exhibition. His winning image was taken on 08/03/24 near the International Protection Agency Office on Lower Mount Street in Dublin.
June: Eamonn Costello, CEO of patientMpower, was announced as one of two winners in the Innovation in Health Tech & Wellbeing Accelerator 2025 Challenge. patientMpower participated in a tailored immersion week at Le Village by CA in Paris in November, meeting potential investors, partners and customers and attending meetings aimed at fostering partnerships and expanding their networks within the French market.
June: Codema scooped the ‘Best Place to Work’ award at the Workplace Excellence Awards 2025, which celebrate professionals and businesses that strive to constantly improve their workplace. With eleven organisations shortlisted in the category, Codema were honoured to have their efforts recognised by taking home the top prize.
July: The Digital Hub welcomed its fourth new member since January, The Production Company. The Production Company is a full-service video production company with an emphasis on creating breathtaking lifestyle, brand, narrative and documentary films.
September: MEG, a Healthcare Quality Management Software company, received the ‘Cultural Inclusion Award’ at the Diversity in Tech Awards. MEG’s globally diverse team demonstrates a deep commitment to cultural inclusion, from fundraising for the Palestinian Red Crescent to creating leadership opportunities for women and promoting cultural exchange.
September: Odin worked with the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) on initiatives that strengthen consumer trust and modernise digital services in Ireland. One such project is the SMS Sender ID Registry, which protects consumers from text scams. Odin also redesigned ComReg’s eLicensing portal, which makes spectrum licensing faster, more accessible and user friendly.
October: Akara’s AI sensor was named on Time Magazine’s ‘The Best Inventions of 2025’ list. The list ranks the three hundred best inventions making the world better, smarter and more fun. Akara’s system installs directly in operating rooms, using AI-powered thermal sensing to track surgeries, send real-time alerts to staff and generate precise scheduling data to reclaim lost time.
October: patientMpower expanded its remit to develop an AI-powered tool for the prediction of lung disease as it marked ten years in business. The development, in partnership with RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, University College Dublin and Enterprise Ireland, built on patientMpower’s existing work as a leader in remote medical monitoring innovation in international markets.
October: The Digital Hub welcomed City of Dublin FET College from Warrenmount to Thomas Street to reside in The Grainstore. City of Dublin FET College – Thomas Street provides adult and community education courses to local residents. It is a subsidiary of The City of Dublin Education and Training Board.
November: At the Web Summit in November, twenty-one companies from across the globe pitched to industry-leading judges in a bid to become the 2025 KPMG Global Tech Innovator winner. Irish company Akara were the first runner-up. Akara were recognised for their innovative approach to streamlining hospital operations through AI-powered sensors, predictive analytics and autonomous disinfection robots.
December: MEG ranked #21 in the Deloitte ‘Technology Fast 50’ Awards 2025, rising three places from last year. Now in its 26th year, the Deloitte Fast 50 recognises Ireland’s fastest-growing technology companies based on four-year revenue growth, celebrating innovation and entrepreneurship across the Irish tech sector.
Our Campus
February: Dublin DataViz held their first ever meetup at The Digital Hub’s iD8 Studio. In the ‘Urban Cycling’s Hidden Data’ meetup, Brian Rogers, Research Scientist at UCD’s Spatial Dynamics Lab, shared his work on crowdsourcing and publishing the stories of Ireland’s cycling public. Dublin DataViz returned to The Digital Hub for three further meetups in 2025, including an open mic.
March: Mother Tongues, in collaboration with Post Primary Languages Ireland’s Languages Connect campaign, hosted a series of creative multilingual workshops for families with children aged from three to six years old at The Digital Hub. The Language Explorer workshops provided a unique experience for parents and their children based on storytelling, play, visual arts and music. While the workshops were guided in English, families were encouraged to embrace their home languages.
March: To mark International Women’s Day, The Digital Hub held a coffee morning for members to catch-up with each other and hear from three inspiring speakers based at The Digital Hub. Mary Fleming (Founder and CEO of Change Clothes), Caroline Swords (Former Director of Operations at MyVolts) and Emma Fitzpatrick (Founder and MD of 11 PR & Events), all spoke about resilience, their career journey to date and shared tips and advice.
May: The Digital Hub hosted several events as part of the annual Culture Date with Dublin 8 festival. The campus hosted the ‘Celebrating William ‘Billy’ Mooney’ photography exhibition which showcased a selection of Billy’s work that celebrates people, places and highlights of his career. Other festival events included the monthly ‘We Love Markets’ flea market, a Swap Shop courtesy of Change Clothes and beekeeping classes with Bee8.
May: The Digital Hub reached almost full capacity with over 91% occupancy across its buildings and a total of 58 member organisations, collectively employing more than 600 people on its campus. Increased demand for its suite of multipurpose event and creative spaces brought almost 23,000 additional visitors to the campus last year.
June: The Digital Hub held its summer networking social which saw approximately 130 people from 24 Digital Hub based companies and organisations gather for a catch-up with each other and to meet new members.
June: ‘Gaza Remains The Story’, a Palestinian cultural exhibition, was held in Bay 1 at the Digital Depot. Organised by Palestinian Cultural Days Dublin and the Palestinian Museum, the exhibition showcased Gaza’s life, history and art through photography, music and talks to counter misinformation, featuring local artists and impacted individuals.
July: The Digital Hub campus hosted several events as part of The Liberties Festival. Artist, Pat Curran’s ‘Untold Lives – People and Places of Dublin exhibition’ took place at The Bank at The Digital Hub. Other festival events at The Digital Hub included workshops with Change Clothes, Draw Dates with Flux Studios, Beekeeping Classes with Bee8 and the monthly ‘We Love Markets’ flea market.
August: The Digital Hub hosted the Ukrainian Crisis Centre in Ireland’s gathering of Ukrainians for their national day with an outdoor festival of music, art and food which attracted some 1,000 visitors.
September: The Digital Hub campus hosted various events and activities for Culture Night including We Love Markets third Culture Night Market. Other festival events included ‘After Light: These Dark Citizens’, a city-wide interactive story that unfolded as the night falls on The Liberties and surrounds of Dublin 8, ‘These Walls’ Street Art Tour and Immersive Installation and Dublin Camera Club’s Photography Exhibition.
September: The Digital Hub campus hosted two performances as part of Dublin Fringe Festival. Minaw Collective, a leading voice in the Irish street art scene, invited audiences to watch walls come to life as Ireland’s best street artists live painted murals in a collective jam session. Undone Theatre and Carmen Collective presented ‘Lessons on Revolution’ at iD8 Studio at The Digital Hub.
September: The annual pear tree community harvest with lecturers and students of NCAD FIELD at the nearby National Collage of Art and Design, local community groups, businesses and organisations was held at The Digital Hub campus. As always, it was a wonderful opportunity for residents of The Liberties to gather alongside those who study and work in the area and mark the extraordinary pear tree standing next to St Patrick’s Tower.
October: The Digital Hub once again hosted Dublin City Council’s annual community-led Halloween Festival. The event was called the Haunted Harbour at the Hub and it attracted over 500 people living and working in the area for a family-friendly, fun and safe Halloween celebration.
October: The Digital Hub hosted Enterprise Ireland and Silicon Republic’s Founders’ Exchange, a forum for early-stage start-ups, where attendees heard from fellow founders, investors and advisors in a relaxed, interactive setting. A further Founders’ Exchange took place at The Digital Hub in December.
December: This year, The Digital Hub hosted several well-known theatre companies for rehearsals and productions on our campus such as The Gaiety Theatre, The Abbey Theatre, Druid Theatre and The Digital Hub members, Verdant Productions, Dead Centre and Brokentalkers.
Our Programmes and Partners
January: Teen-Turn’s Technovation Challenge returned in January. The challenge invites teen girls to create a social enterprise that promotes positive changes in their communities through the delivery of a mobile app and the 2025 challenge was themed #PowerToTheGirl. Teen-Turn supported 22 sessions each week, in eighteen schools and online, totalling four hundred hours of skills building delivered nationwide.
February: The Roblox Rising Producers programme commenced at The Digital Hub, delivering weekly sessions for local primary school students. The programme introduced participants to game design, digital creativity and storytelling through Roblox Studio, supporting the development of coding, collaboration and creative problem-solving skills. This programme was again delivered in the second half of the year to three classes from primary schools in Dublin 8.
February: Smart D8 launched its latest open call for pilot projects. Continuing to focus on the measured health and wellbeing needs of the 45,000 strong diverse Dublin 8 population, the call sought innovative projects across three key themes; Connected Patient in the Community, Positive and Healthy Ageing and Community.
March: The Digital Hub co-hosted a ‘Cloak Your Art, Confuse the Algorithm’ symposium and workshop with The Digital Hub’s Technologist-in-Residence, Dr. Dunja Skoko. This hybrid symposium and hands-on workshop, led by Elaine Hoey, NCAD, and Dr. Dunja Skoko, brought together leading artists, activists and computer scientists to raise awareness and share strategies for protecting art and creative originality from being copied or used to train AI.
April: Bee8, a social enterprise of The Liberties Community Project and Ireland’s largest urban apiary project, commenced beekeeping classes to give beginners a hands-on experience to get close to bees and learn about beekeeping, biodiversity and the magic of honey production.
April: The Digital Hub hosted the innovation team from VHI for a two-day workshop developed with Smart D8 to showcase inspiring innovations that are market validated in the real world. Thirty members from VHI’s innovation team engaged with innovators from Smart D8 pilot projects who shared their journeys from idea to implementation.
April: The Digital Hub launched its second open call to expand its existing panel of tutors and facilitators who deliver learning programmes on behalf of The Digital Hub in areas such as AI, VR, AR, electronics, robotics, software coding, music production, filmmaking, video production, games development and technology.
May: The Digital Hub presented the 2025 Digital Hub Award to Ciara Fox (TU Dublin, Blanchardstown) for her final-year Creative Digital Media project ‘The Homeplace’, an immersive installation exploring rural Irish farm life from the 1920s–1960s. This is the eighth year of The Digital Hub Award which recognises one outstanding final year project from students of Creative Digital Media at TU Dublin Blanchardstown.
May: The Digital Hub partnered with Dublin City Council Culture Company and Dublin City Libraries on the Children’s History Podcast Programme. The programme provided children in local primary schools with the opportunity to research the history of their local area and create their own history podcast. The classes were held at The Digital Hub and facilitated by comedy and children’s writer Aidan Fitzmaurice and the Dublin City Historian-in-Residence for Children, Dervilia Roche.
May: The Digital Hub’s Technologist-in-Residence, Dr. Dunja Skoko, hosted the online seminar Early EU Founders: How the U.S. Patent System Can Help Protect Your IP. The session brought together early-stage founders, university spinouts and innovators to explore practical approaches to intellectual property protection and investment readiness, with expert insights into the advantages of the U.S. patent system for European startups.
May: The Digital Hub hosted an arts and health event with Dr. Jill Sonke, an internationally recognised leader in arts in health and wellbeing, in partnership with Creative Aging International. The event explored the role of creative practice in supporting population health.
May: The Digital Hub brought ‘MINDSHLD AI: Digital Champions Academy’ to Dublin 8 to help primary school students understand AI-generated risks, equip them with critical thinking skills and build digital resilience in an AI-driven world. MindShld AI is a neuroscience-driven educational toolkit designed to empower students to understand how technology, including AI, can be used to create and manipulate information online.
May: RoboHub Kids, a hands-on robotics and STEM learning programme developed at The Digital Hub in partnership with Akara Robotics, returned for the spring term. Delivered in the Learning Studio, the programme introduced local primary school students to robotics, problem-solving and teamwork through practical, project-based learning.
June: Pocket Forests held a series of lunchtime workshops at The Digital Hub every Wednesday in June. Attendees explored how to turn food waste into compost, created mini ponds, spent time drawing the plants around them and learned how to take the first step in growing a Pocket Forest.
June: The Digital Hub supported the Innovation in Health Tech & Wellbeing Accelerator 2025 Challenge, a programme led by La French Tech Dublin in collaboration with CACI, Business France, the France Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Enterprise Ireland. Six companies took part in the programme, with two finalists selected to attend a tailored immersion and market exploration programme at Le Village by CA in Paris, supporting international growth and collaboration in the health tech sector.
July: Smart D8 announced their 2025 pilot projects which focused on using AI to transform cancer diagnoses, supporting men’s health, and managing heart failure through patient empowerment. The announcement of the latest pilots marked the fifth year of the Smart D8 community health and wellbeing programme, which has reached over 40% of the Dublin 8 community to date.
July: Pocket Forests were recognised for their work in nature protection at Powerscourt’s inaugural Working with Nature Awards. The team won the ‘Overall Winner’ award and the ‘Outstanding Nature Protector’ award for their transformative work in rewilding urban spaces, fostering community engagement and creating thriving ecosystems.
July: Teen-Turn held its 2025 induction event at The Digital Hub to mark the start of its summer work placement programme, known as Teenturnships. The induction welcomed participating students and partners, introducing the young women to the programme and supporting their preparation for at least two weeks of full-time experience in STEM-focused career environments nationwide. This year marked the 10th anniversary of Teen-Turn’s summer work experience programme, known as “Teenturnships.”
September: Smart D8 x Move Ahead with The Digital Hub were a finalist in two categories, ‘Citizen Engagement’ and ‘Digital Inclusion’ at the Ireland eGoverment Awards 2025. Honouring excellence and creativity in Ireland’s Public Sector, the Ireland eGovernment Awards recognise innovative public-private sector collaborations. MoveAhead is tackling one of the biggest challenges facing young people today, physical inactivity in the digital age.
September: Teen-Turn received the ‘Diversity in Tech Impact’ Award at the Diversity in Tech Awards 2025. This award recognises a not-for-profit organisation that has demonstrated exceptional initiative in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace.
September: Foolish Flame, a groundbreaking XR installation fusing tradition, technology and climate storytelling supported by Beta Festival, The Digital Hub, Culture Ireland and Project Arts Centre, premiered at Ars Electronica, one of the world’s most prestigious festivals of art, technology and society. It showcased to an Irish audience later in the year at Beta Festival at The Digital Hub.
October: Smart D8 hosted their 3rd annual showcase event at Digital Depot at The Digital Hub. The showcase brought together innovators, researchers, community partners and entrepreneurs to explore the future of population health and wellbeing. This year’s edition spotlighted pioneering pilot projects and initiatives tackling real-world health challenges in the heart of Dublin city.
October: The Digital Hub continued delivery of the D8 Together Video Challenge, an online creative storytelling programme in two secondary schools and engaged 51 young people in developing digital video skills.
October: The Digital Hub started its newest outreach initiative, Creative Coding in the Classroom, which delivered hands-on coding sessions directly in local primary schools to support computational thinking, creativity and early digital skills development.
November: Beta festival returned for its third edition, with a focus on exploring ideas of fluidity across water, language, information and quantum states. Co-founded and supported by The Digital Hub, Beta featured a series of events including exhibitions, interactive workshops, performances, a thought-provoking conference and an assembly focused on artificial intelligence and art.
November: The D8 Surfers Club celebrated its 10-year anniversary. It started life as a tutor-led class, where local residents were guided in their discovery of how digital technologies could benefit them in their everyday lives. There are currently thirteen participants in the class, consisting of ten women and three men, the majority of whom are residents of Dublin 8. The participants’ ages range from 72 to 94, with an average age of 78. The participants engaged in AI workshops in October and November.
November: MoveAhead won the ‘Tech for Good’ Award at the Ibec Technology Ireland Awards 2025 for ‘SmartMoves’, a digital health project delivered in schools and communities across Dublin. The initiative was implemented in partnership with Smart D8, The Digital Hub Development Agency, The Liberties Community Project and ADAPT Centre and recognises the impact of evidence-based, technology-enabled approaches to supporting children’s physical activity, confidence and development.
December: The Liber8 Music Project, run by The Digital Hub and BIMM Music Institute Dublin, completed latest run. Twenty-eight students including several from Dublin 8 immersed themselves in this three-month creative afterschool programme. They learned about music styles, performance techniques, recording and sound design and the students showcased their newly acquired skills to family and friends at a live performance and graduation ceremony in December.
AuthorDigital Hub Team