Weekend Challenge 5 / Navan Educate Together National School

Funding for school-building projects was announced by the government as part of the new jobs initiative. But, one school in Navan is taking matters into their own hands as they attempt to give their school a massive facelift by painting their entire school…
Navan Educate Together National School is Meath’s only Educate Together, Multi-denominational school. There are 135 eager kids representing 22 nationalities. They are on the waiting list for a new school – it’ll be at least 2 years or up to 10 years before that will happen.
They’ve been in their current home, which used to be a SIPTU building, for 8 years. So, instead of sitting back in drab surroundings, they want to make their school as colourful and vibrant place to learn as possible while they wait for their new school

Weekend Challenge 4 // Convent Road Garden

Dirty Old Towns?’ fourth challenge was a ‘Waste of Space’ challenge. We are headed to Roscommon Town, where they’re wanted to turn a piece of waste ground into a useable, vibrant space.
Ireland is littered with derelict buildings, ghost estates and empty undeveloped land. All of this is a waste of potential and a waste of our resources. Yet amazingly all across the country, communities are taking action to reclaim these empty spaces that litter their town.
Residents in Roscommon are no exception and they planed to re-vamp an empty patch of ground on a busy thoroughfare of the town, called the Convent Road Garden. The land is owned by the Council and is a very visible site, with schoolchildren passing it every day.

Weekend Challenge 3 // the River Dodder

The 3rd weekend challenge was a River Clean-Up of one of Dublin’s best known and most important rivers – the River Dodder. And it’s UCD students who where taking on the Dirty Old Towns? challenge…

As part of An Taisce’s National Spring Clean the School of Biology and Environmental Science, UCD, will put its environmental credentials where its mouth is and tackle the litter along a reach of South Dublin’s River Dodder.
Masses of waste are carelessly entering these catchment areas and adding the billions of kgs of waste wandering into the ocean and creating massive garbage patches. So these students, want to start with their closest river. By the end of Saturday they will weigh how much they’ve collected to gauge exactly the impact they have made.

Weekend Challenge 2 // Bray Promenade

‘Dirty Old Towns?’ second weekend challenge was a coastal challenge for the Easter Weekend. We went to Bray.
Bray is Ireland’s longest established seaside town and traditionally has thriving tourism. But, it’s famous mile-long promenade is littered with shabby-looking beach shelters, kiosks, and a band stand in serious need of a lick of paint. The old seaside grandeur of yesteryear needed to be brought back to the beachfront.
Bray have proved themselves as a town that can get it together when they need to. Bray went from being one of the most littered towns in Ireland in 2008 to the cleanest in just one year. The town ascribed the turnaround to a co-ordinated, community effort – so can they harness this energy again and turn around their promenade?

Weekend Challenge 1 : Ballyshannon

Our first Weekend Challenge took place in Ballyshannon in Donegal on the 9th and 10th April 2011.Local volunteers transformed an old, run-down handball alley down by Mall Park. 2FM’s Colm Hayes and Ballyshannon’s very own Hollywood star, Sean McGinley where also there mucking in and getting their hands dirty.

Martina O’Brien emailed us to tell us about the great work her 72 year old father, Patrick O’Brien has done on waste ground in the housing estate where he lives in Cashel, Co. Tipperary. The area is at the side of his house and had become a dumping ground for everything from household rubbish to broken car windscreens. The area was full of rats.

He cleaned up the rubbish and picked up the broken glass by hand himself. He cut the grass, planted shrubs and trees (which he paid for himself). He made seats for the area and put paving around the seats. The more work he put in, the more neighbours started to help and Tesco donated some shrubs.

Over the past few months kids have been breaking the trees and destroying the seats, but this has not deterred him at all. With the help of his son and some of the younger people on the estate they are really getting a great sense of community spirit and it’s wonderful to see what can be achived when you get your hands dirty.
If you know of anyone in your area who is making a difference and you would like them featued on the site please email us in the info to dirtyoldtowns@gmail.com

cute public art project by Akin Bilgic happening in San Francisco with the hope of  spreading a little “random happiness” using  Kickstarter project to raise help raise funds

Remember ireland has its own version of Kickstarter, Fundit.ie if you have your own project you would like to try and get funding for

laughingsquid:

The SF Mirror Project: Spreading Happiness via Messages on Mirrors

zangtumb:

Map of ireland by bike

 -  Niall o’Cleirigh

(via Laughing Squid)