The Exchange was the location on Wednesday 26th October for the National Dissemination Event for Ru:Rban, an EU project funded under URBACT. Over 60 community representations from across County Carlow heard about the project benefits for County Carlow and engaged in a community garden design challenge.
URBACT’s mission is to enable cities and towns to work together and develop integrated solutions to common urban challenges, by networking, learning from one another’s experiences, drawing lessons and identifying good practices to improve urban policies.
Speaking about the project, Cllr. Fintan Phelan, Mayor of Carlow MD said “I welcome our involvement in this project with Carlow County Council playing its part in the EU agenda by examining issues which are critical to the development of our County”. The Mayor continued to say “for me as Mayor part of developing Carlow Town is looking at the best practice adopted by others and Ru:Rban has brought together our local network with our new European partners to development, share and build on new ways of working to benefit all who work, live, visit and learn in County Carlow”
The Ru:Rban project builds upon the "Management model of Urban gardens in Rome" Good Practice guidelines, with the aim of transferring this best practice to EU cities geographically distant from each other, to ensure sharing of experiences and to enhance the capacities of local governance. The project’s Good Practice model was divided into three distinct themes: Capacity building in organising urban gardens, Inspiring and training people to manage urban gardens (Gardenisers) and urban gardens governance & regulations.
The partners in the project are all Local Government organisations and include Rome (Lead Partner: Italy) / Split (Croatia) / Alexandroupolis (Greece) / ALGECIRAS (Spain) and Carlow Town (County Carlow).
The project was coordinated by the Local Enterprise Office in association with relevant Departments in Carlow County Council. The funding approved for the project by the EU through URBACT was €83,360.
At the dissemination event selected gardens were awarded €1500 in investment for their community. The gardens selected were 1st Place Myshall Muintir Nature , 2nd Place An Gairdin beo and 3rd Place The Plots. As part of the final event, €500 in prizes will also be made available for Community Groups via a public vote which is open until 24th November 2022 on the following link: https://bit.ly/GardenDesignCarlow. The final activity of the project will be held in Rome on 9th-10th November 2022 with the final report being published to Carlow County Council later in the year.
Kieran Comerford, Head of Economic Development & Enterprise said, “We very much enjoyed working with our EU partners and our local ULG group on this project and seeing where the potential lies in Urban Gardens and Tourism”. Comerford concluded by saying “the main benefit for Carlow from this project is the significant capacity development and networking opportunities for the County which may lead to further projects in the Future".
For further information contact Kieran Comerford on 086-8252037 or e-mail kcomerford@carlowcoco.ie
