A new project brings tales of old Dublin back to life on the streets where they took place. Catherine Foleytakes a stroll around the city

Stories recorded recently older people from the docklands area of Dublin reveal a time of close-knit communities and forgotten hardships. There are memories of the men who worked hard on the docks, frequenting pubs that "would be jumping at seven o'clock in the morning"; of the tenements and the building of new two-roomed flats along Pearse Street, which came complete with a toilet; of school days that were "hard going"; of the outbreak of the second World War and of the kind-hearted Dicey Riley who provided protection to country girls who ended up on the street. All of human life is here.

The stories form part of an audio documentary called (murmur) Dublin Docklands, the title underlining the intimate nature of the stories' delivery: each memory relates to a particular location in the docklands and visitors can follow a trail passing along streets on the south side such as Sir John Rogerson's Quay, City Quay and Pearse Street, and on the northside through places such as the North Wall Quay and Custom House Quay, with up to 40 different locations marked by signs with green ears along the way. Anyone can listen to the stories by dialling a phone number that is posted on the green ear, and the voice, at the end of the line, recounts a story related to that place. Listeners can also visit the website and click on an ear to hear the stories, and can even record their own story over the phone.

The memories help to build up an aural tapestry of life in another time. Their stories criss-cross the gamut of historical, social and anecdotal memory. Forgotten experiences seem to come alive as the participants recall playing, swimming, working, courting and being at home. Their voices echo down the phone line linking us to a time when the air was full of the sounds of a busy docklands environment.

Kathleen Dwyer of Townsend Street remembers how Christopher, her husband of 53 years, used to call for her in Markievicz House where she lived before they were married. He would go in and join her family to say the rosary before they went out. "He was very shy," she remembers.

"There was always a happyhoolie feeling in this house," recalls Mary McCann, talking about her home off Guild Street on the northside of the river. "There was a huge community spirit then. My uncle could bring in a bottle of stout and they'd have a hoolie. There would be a sing song and a hoolie. They'd beautiful voices."

"People were always on the river," recalls Tessie Lawlor, in her story. "To me it's very quiet now." She remembers swimming there. "Sometimes we didn't have any bathing suits. We'd get in in our dresses. If we were caught by our fathers, we'd be in the bad books." Some of the boys "used to be able to swim to the buoy. I used to do it when my daddy was at work."

May Byrne remembers her mother getting the keys to their new flat in Pearse House. As children, she remembers how "we were all together going into each other's flats. The beauty of it was we had our own toilet. I was about four when we moved there. I was married out of there."

Angela Nugent of Seville Place recalls waltzing outside her front door and then going dancing: "Most of us had to be home by ten. We had two hours dancing."

Bridget Mooney, standing at the Point Depot, remembers bringing a lunch across to her father when he was working on the docks. "We used to get the ferry across from Ringsend," she says. "They only had half an hour." She'd bring him a billy can of tea plus a bowl of cabbage, potatoes, and pig's feet or pig's cheek, all "wrapped up in a tea towel". She recalls that "they hadn't a weekly wage. They got paid by the day. Some of them spoiled it, they used to go to the pub. Some of them were very fond of the drink. They were all good men. It was a hard life for them but it was a clean life."

James Byrne tells about his father coming home during the war when the merchant ship he was working on was torpedoed. After two years at sea, his father arrived home one day to bring the young James and his younger brother down to Sir John Rogerson's Quay to see the damage that had been done to the ship.

(Murmur) Dublin Docklands is based on an original idea that was created by Canadian artists Shawn Micallef, James Roussel and Gabe Sawhney, who specialise in the use of new technology to animate the urban environment.

"There are more similarities than differences," says Micallef, when comparing stories he's collected from various communities - the first Murmur project was in Toronto. All stories, he says, "are exceptionally local, those things seem to cross over from city to city. The setting is different and the wider story that people tap into, like the docks in Ireland, is there, but there is much that is the same," he says.

Although it has sometimes been difficult to get people to talk in some cities where they have done (murmur) projects, Micallef has learned in the course of recording and compiling the different stories that whether people hold back or outspoken, "people still care, they are rather attached to their histories".

Getting people to tell their stories can sometimes be like pulling teeth, he says - though Irish people were less reticent than some other nationalities in (murmur) projects.. People "undervalue their own stories or they feel someone else can tell them [ but] once they start, the stories are great. They place a lot of value on their stories but they don't know it.

"What (murmur) has done is tap into that ingrained, inherent story-telling that we do. Even the shy people. The way people have of communicating, wrapping facts, is how we communicate with each other. It's alive and well and (murmur) gives a technological tweak to that and it helps distribute those stories."

Listening to and editing the stories from the Dublin Docklands, which were compiled by a group of journalists including this writer, Micallef says "I liked them all," but, he adds, the ones that he liked best of all are those about swimming in the Liffey and how the contributors all ended up by saying "but I'd never do that now" or "you'd never see them swimming there now".

Dominic Campbell, the Bealtaine Festival artistic director, who co-commissioned the project for Dublin with Mary McCarthy, of Dublin Docklands Development Authority, says he was and is surprised by "how comfortable people are" with the project. "I really like the fact that it's so simple, and that the relationship between the audience and the story-tellers is quite blurry, it's not like going to the theatre. I like the fact that you can walk around the city and get a different image of it."

He was surprised by "how much the stories reveal that everybody is concerned with the same things. They are bothered about their neighbourhood, about their family and friends, and they like the things that make them laugh. They like the positive things."

Frances McTeer, standing near the Point, who explains what the Waxie's Dargle was, bears this viewpoint out. "The rich went to the Dargle [ River] in Bray," she says. "The poor people in Dublin couldn't afford to. The waxies were all the people who made shoes and the like. They came from the city centre. We were all poor but we didn't think we were poor. My cousins used to come at the weekend from Cabra. I don't know where we slept. A bit of bread and jam and we were made up."

(murmur) Dublin Docklands runs until Sept 4. Free maps are available throughout the city centre. www.murmurdublindocklands.info