If the devil is said to have all the best tunes, it's fair to say that older people have all the best stories. It's Wednesday afternoon at the Corduff Resource Centre in Blanchardstown. The tea is flowing, the biscuits are out and the laughter is loud. I'm being warmly welcomed at the weekly meetings of the Evergreens, the active retired group which has been in existence since 1988. At any given time, the 16 members congregate each Wednesday for a variety of activities. It might just be for the chat, cuppa and a bite to eat in the centre's café. Sometimes they play cards or do bowling, and there's bingo on occasion. The trips away are very much looked forward to. This year there's a weekend in White's Hotel in Wexford and St Vincent de Paul will sponsor a week in Kerdiffstown House in Naas. "I enjoy the outings," says Laura Malone, who has been a member of the group for 14 years. "We've done courses in swimming and we did a computer course – very basic but we got our certificates."

Kathleen Martin, who has been part of the group since its beginnings, fondly remembers its origins. "We had a nun here who was very sociable and she was kind to the old folks and very funny. So she decided to start a meeting for us all. She'd have different games, you know, and sing-alongs. She was a brilliant singer, great sense of humour. Sr Teresita, it was. She's since died." What Kathleen loves about the group is its continuity. "It's always here for us, no matter what. We all come back together," she says. "We go out a lot in summer and we wouldn't do that only for the group."

"I love the chatting and the gossiping!" says Mary Moffatt, at which the group laughs. "Good talk, there does be and the bingo of course. We bring home tins of beans and peas and jams and it does you grand." Emily Giffney is another bingo fan. Does she win often? "She's always winning," the rest of the group shouts. "Sometimes I win, sometimes I don't," Emily demurs, and adds that it's nice to come here and have a chat.

That there's craic and laughter and many, many stories here is clear. Laura is explaining the 'taxi dance' concept to me, whereby the women queue up and the men pick the first woman and bring her round once, then deposit her at the end of the queue before going onto the next one, so that everyone on the dance floor gets a twirl. Kathleen tells me she has lived on the street where Give Up Yer Auld Sins was recorded and that Peig Cunningham, the teacher who made the original recordings of Dublin schoolchildren recounting biblical tales, taught her. "She was only 24 and we thought she was beautiful looking," she says.

Earlier this year the women's stories were brought to a wider audience. The Community Development Project, which has an office in the centre, used funding to hire Martina O'Connor, a reminiscence therapist, who was working with older people at the local James Connolly hospital. Reminiscence therapy involves the exchange of memories and stories, passing on wisdom and skills and generally reflecting upon life; it's a technique often used with older people. O'Connor and community development worker Monica Shannon felt it was important that the group's memories and life experience could be somehow honoured. "At first, we just wanted to capture their stories in some way, perhaps get them published," Shannon says. "In our Celtic tiger years our older folk have become more and more marginalised to the fringes of society; seen more as a liability as opposed to a resource, with their voices being heard less and less. The richness and wisdom of their lives are getting lost with it."

O'Connor suggested playback theatre, a unique collaboration between performers and audience. First established in New York in 1975, it originated from the exploration of ways to bring theatre closer to the community. Essentially, members from the audience are invited to tell a story from their past and then watch as the tale is recreated on stage by four to six actors. It's improvisational theatre and storytelling but it's also building community connections at the same time.

Dublin 15 Playback Theatre, most of whose members are drama therapists, is a newly formed group but they intend to become a permanent part of the community.

"We felt it was a medium that could give voice and validation to the older members of the D15 community," O'Connor explains. "It's a space in which people can tell their stories that modern urban living does not allow time for. Playback offers an opportunity for the storyteller to witness the value of their life experience to share it with others. It can be adapted to any group within the community to get stories told and honour the dignity of an individual's experience."

The result of the endeavour, which has now become Blanchardstown-wide, including other old-folks groups from the Mulhuddart and Blakestown areas, was Time of Our Lives. It was shown in the local theatre, An Draoícht, in late January much to the enjoyment of those whose stories were told, as well as the audience in general.

"We were surprised by the power of it, the evocativeness of storytelling," Monica Shannon says. It's something that they hope to build on in the future with possible reprisals of the show.

"Older people can be patronised and not treated has adults," adds Shannon. "They claimed back their power with this and they were in charge."

"It was very good to see it on stage, it was brilliant," Kathleen Martin says. "We all had little stories that we didn't realise we knew. We didn't think of them as anything extraordinary but there were some very funny stories there."

Mary Moffatt

"When I was 14, I got a job in a factory. All the young ones were after leaving school at 14. They all said there was great jobs going so we all went to get a job. I was making rosary beads. He put me sitting at this desk and on the desk there was little crosses and figures and little types of ribbons and a small little tiny hammer. And he showed me what to do, actually nailing Christ on the cross. I done that all day, hammering Christ on the cross, and when I went home that evening my mother said to me, 'Well how did you get on? What were you doing?' I said, 'I didn't like it so much, I was hammering Christ on the cross.' She said, 'What?' I said, 'Yes, that's what I was doing all day' so she said, 'If anyone asks you what you were working on, having to tell them that, hammering Christ on the cross, it wouldn't be too good.' So anyway she decided to go down the next morning and she said, 'I wonder would you be able to give her another job. We're a bit religious in our house and we don't like that type of job.'

"So they gave me another job anyway, making rosary beads. The beads were real small and I had to put them on a chain, you know, to make the rosary. And I went home that night and me hands, they were in an awful state. I told me mother, I told her, I says, 'I think I'll go back and ask them for that Christ on the cross because it was easier than what I got.' So that was my first experience of a job and I think I got a shilling a week and my mother gave me tuppence off it and she kept 10 pence. Ah, it was was a long time ago."

Kathleen Martin

"It was the morning of my confirmation. I hadn't got my coat and when it came it was too short. I didn't realise; I thought it was gorgeous, and it had a little velvet hat. And then in those days you got a few pence. But the following Sunday I was out playing in the street and I had the coat back on and all of sudden I got this knocking on my knee and it was a penny down in the corner of the coat and I was so thrilled and I didn't tell anyone and I ran down to the shop and I spent it on sweets."

Laura Malone

"It was the day I made my first holy communion and my dad was in the Mater hospital. At that time it was only visiting for an hour on a Wednesday and an hour on a Sunday. There was six of us and you were only allowed one at a time and we had to go in turns in visit. Because I made my communion I was brought in by the nuns in the Mater hospital – there was all nuns that time around the hospital – and of course they made a fuss with me, the first holy communion. I was special that day. And all the visitors, all the patients' visitors, all gave me money. I thought I was a millionaire coming out! My father had a TB hip. He was on a plaster bed for a good while. He was a cyclist, a bicycle racer in his earlier days, and the few falls he got kind of… well it turned into TB eventually."

Lucy O' Neill

"My story was that of my first confession. When I was making my holy communion, you had to go to confession first and I was terrified of confession, really afraid of confession. When we went to the church I kept going back to the end of the queue and letting everyone go in front of me. We had a little garden in my mother's house and the people next door had gooseberries and the fence was rotted and we used to be trying to go through to get the gooseberries. So I took two gooseberries from next door and I had to go to confession and tell the priest that I stole the gooseberries and the sweat was pouring out of me. And I was always afraid of confession afterwards, isn't it funny? Always afraid of going in when I was a child. What did the priest give me? Oh three Hail Marys."