Dublin Neighbourhood Potting Shed

“The Happiness of the people of Dublin is found in the spaces between the buildings“

Using the above sentence as a guide, The Potting Shed were asked to deliver a range of ideas and concepts that would form the basis for a series of cultural events and offerings for the people of Co.Dublin.

It was also required that these concepts try and keep to the important set of values outlined below:

Have use-ability at it’s core (identical whenever possible, equivalent when not)
Are relevant
Have meaningful engagement, active citizen participation
Are accessible (physically, intellectually and virtually)
Are sustainable

This particular brainstorming event was held in the beautiful Irish HQ of social network giants, Twitter. The venue was ideal for a Potting Shed session and a fantastic space to welcome all the regulars, as well as the great turn out of new faces.

With our brief discussed the teams got stuck straight into the task at hand. The ideas springing up from each group varied hugely, but were all centered around linking communities to each other, and to the kind of cultural experiences that normally only exists the Dublin’s city centre.

Ideas ranged from:

Open source community event kits, for efficient, repeatable, and reliable event set up.
The silicone suburbs, a push for more local coding classes/events, tech talks, and innovation incubators at primary level and up.
Transforming and champion the local library. Evolve it into the cultural education, information, experimentation, community, makerspace hub of the 21st century that it could be. Make it relevant and useful to far more people, to experiment and connect during, and well after after, education.
Cultural fan zones, concerts, operas, and plays broadcast on big screens in local parks, or cinemas, for everyone to enjoy.
Cultural interventions, events and exhibitions to spring up unannounced in strategic locations to create wonder and engagement.
Dublin sea,lake,river events. We love jumping in water be it the Liffey or 40ft. Coast festivals in the shallow tide like in S.Korea.
Community league events, based around existing models: Dragons Den, The Voice, Bake off etc. As well as events adapted to fit whatever community skill is being promoted: choirs, bands, artist, writers, plays, acrobatics etc.
Community barter events, a food festival where each town grows one crop and barters with other towns to gain the various required ingredients ahead of a large collective food festival.
Park libraries, bookshelves located in local parks over the summer months.
Social interaction street furniture.Benches painted or marked in an identifiable way so that if you sit on it people know you are open to having a chat and engaging with whoever else shares the bench.

This is, of course, just a fraction of what was conceived on the day! Everyone involved found this to be a really enjoyable and challenging topic, the teams were encouraged to go wild, while also keep the project values in mind. This resulted in fantastic, and incredibly different, ideas across the board. Another successful day in some else’s office!