The four new projects in this initiative include co-designing a new community-focused future for the Marshalsea Barracks in Dublin 8, supporting the sustainable development of a Bord na Mona village in Roscommon, developing a socially inclusive outdoor market  in Waterford and a reawakened Main Street for Headford in Galway. Each project will be paired with a member of the Reimagine Professional Panel to co-create and co-design solutions to problems or opportunities they have identified in their locality.

Using creative community engagement and co-design processes, Reimagine Waterford aims to explore the potential of a new market in Waterford Cultural Quarter. This project sees the residential, business and creative communities of Waterford’s O’Connell Street working alongside the Irish Architecture Foundation, Waterford City & County Council, Waterford Area Partnership and WIT School of Architecture to creatively explore new and innovative ideas, with a particular focus on supporting social enterprise and those from migrant and minority communities.

In Reimagine Marshalsea Barracks, a network of communities in Dublin’s South West Inner City are coming together to reimagine a future of a building that once loomed large in Dublin 8’s community life and local history. Community Organisations and Residents Network (CORN) is a network of 46 community organisations that seek to provide an inclusive, active forum for community stakeholders across the South West Inner City. In the coming months, they will be working with the Irish Architecture Foundation to propose a new community-focused future for the Marshalsea Barracks. In an area currently experiencing rapid transformation, this is a chance for the community to be at the very centre of a project, and for the site’s development to be guided by their vision.

A small community at the centre of massive national and global climate change policy is the focus of Reimagine Cloontuskert. The residents of a small Roscommon village that was created by architect Frank Gibney to house Bord na Mona workers are looking to his original vision to seek inspiration and guidance for their future. What they are aiming for is a whole-community approach to the sustainable development of their village, inclusive of the community’s many needs, which seeks to preserve the architecture of their village. Right now, the central story of their community is an industry undergoing massive and rapid change, but Cloontuskert wants to reimagine this story and will work with a Reimagine architect to harness the visionary, ambitious, design focused and sustainable aspects of the Bord na Mona Villages housing project to build their future on.

Headford Town Team wants to create a serious conversation about the future of their Main Street – a conversation that includes everyone in the community. Their concern is that so much focus has been on traffic management rather than about living, about playing, about dwelling, about thriving businesses, and about simply enjoying their Main Street. This is a main street that should be appreciated and celebrated as an Architectural Conservation Area with most of its 18th and 19th Century street structure and sense of enclosure intact. Reimagine Headford will pair a member of our Professional Panel with their active and creative community who are ready to try new ways of enjoying their main street, celebrating its qualities, and trialing solutions to its challenges. The aim is to work as a community to create a new vision for the street, allowing them to guide the future development of their town.

Visit our dedicated website, www.reimagine-place.ie to learn more about this and our nationwide placemaking programme.

Reimagine is made possible by the Creative Ireland Programme’s National Creativity Fund and additional funding through the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

The IAF is principally funded by the Arts Council, and further funded by the Department of Housing, Heritage and Local Government, and the OPW, which enables us to deliver projects like Reimagine.