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Galway Wild Geese
To connect the Hidden Heartlands to Wild Atlantic Way Along the Digital Highway
To promote our towns and villages as sustainable places to live work and participate locally.
To create a "climate smart" community
Featured Projects
Remote working, co-working spaces, digital threads are emerging connecting our towns and villages like never before. New ways of working are now opening up to local communities, people are actively searching for sustainable towns to live, work and participate locally.
Local businesses have always been the beating heart of our communities. With Xplore, you can now find everything you need to know about these establishments in one place.
Discover the finest bars, eateries and owner-operated stores your selected town has to offer, or find more information on your favourite hidey-hole.
There are 300+ currently open remote (location-less) jobs in your town, you just need to know where to look. We Work Remotely is one of the biggest remote jobs board, and the wonderful Grow Remote have one too. If you want to navigate between them, Remote Hub has you covered. Grow Remote have put all other resources into one place. If you want to convince your boss, you can use this template, show them this HR policy template, or ask them to email Grow Remote for a 1-1 session with industry leaders who have implemented this.
The Circular Economy is built around ‘doing more with less’ or consuming fewer material resources to sustain our communities, homes and economy. The model builds on sharing, reusing and reinventing materials to meet our needs and replaces the current ‘take, make, dispose’ model. Our government are now developing a whole-of-Government strategy to ensure Ireland transitions to a Circular Economy and avails of the opportunities the circular economy can provide. These opportunities include reducing waste, shrinking our carbon footprint, supporting local and regional economic development, growing new business models and providing skilled employment opportunities.
€1 billion Rural Regeneration and Development Fund.
- Funding to support landmark regeneration projects that will transform Rural Ireland
- Communities urged to put forward projects that will drive economic growth, combat dereliction and breathe new life into town centres
- Strong focus on converting old buildings into remote working facilities and attracting people back to rural towns and villages
This Fund will support landmark regeneration projects across the country that will breathe new life into rural towns and villages.
There will also be a strong focus on developing remote working facilities such as digital and enterprise communities, as well as e-learning, cultural and community spaces.
Our 4 Pillars
Climate Action
Remote Working
Digital Transformation
Enterprise Development
We are the Wild Geese, consummate creatives
Our Ambition for
Galway
When it comes to rural development and renewal, government alone does not have all the answers. No town, no village, no parish, or community are the same, each has their own unique characteristics.
The government have made it clear with the rural strategy plan and they want to hear from and work with communities to affect change.
They have thrown down the gaunlet!
The people best situated to effect change in rural communities are the people who live there.
Covid has taught us all one thing to think outside the box. Now is not the time to go back inside of it. We must act. And we must be great, we must be bold. We must be ambitious.
National Rural Development Plan
Collaboration | Partnerships | Alliances
The ball is firmly in our court. We all have an opportunity now to have our say: our leader companies, LCDCs, our tidy towns, our sports clubs, our local chambers, our social enterprises, our town teams, our local development associations, you are the people who will make the difference, to our rural communities – not working in silos, but working collaboratively, sharing ideas and innovations to benefit the whole community.
Funding
There are more funding streams available across government for rural development than ever before, and forthcoming review of the national development plan will underpin and strengthen the government’s absolute commitment to balanced regional development investing in key infrastructure and public services in our rural communities.
“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
A Meaningful Master Plan
Vision: Town Centre Approach
The Expert Citizen
The Expert Citizen – a phrase coined by Guila Vallone Italian Urban Designer – are the folks who live in the community:
- they actually know the importance of their heritage and culture
- they know the traditions of their place
- generations of oral histories pulse through their veins
Civic Stewardship
Timing is everything and post Covid the time is ripe to win the hearts and the minds of rural communities back, to put the public space of their towns back to the centre of life activities every day to open our box of treasures.
If we create a public space that is attractive for people to live, naturally it will be by default also attractive for people to visit.
Intangible Heritage
Its not only by protecting the structures such as shop fronts – it’s also about our intangible heritage, our festivals, our storytelling, our traditions, our collective memory – within this space you have the empowering piece and that is:
Civic Stewardship.
A Master Plan
With true and meaningful delivery of a quality public land plan, more innovative urban design, we have an opportunity to create a theatre set stage where the community return to the town square, come back to their town, where it becomes a stage for activity, ambitiously creating a plan, which is a our master plan ensuring people feel connected and dwell longer.
Champions of the Plan
And so, the people become champion of the plan, – they don’t object because they have been involved, and that’s our true asset in rural Ireland, attracting young families to live and work where the only fast thing is actually the broadband!
We cannot design towns from a desktop. We need to talk to people, observe people, listen to people and work collaboratively, the local authority have a crucial role in this policy in this 2 way conversation
Collective Memories
Galway County Council has a very broad reach in rural Ireland working with villages of up to 150 people up to towns of between 5,000 to 12,000 people, each with their unique collective memories.
They need to have the expert expertise, they need to have the right multidisciplinary team, and lead by an urban design plan more than engineering traffic plan, as in the past.
From the Newsroom
Athenry Shortlisted for .IE Awards – Community Digital
The team at Galway Wild Geese were delighted to learn that the Athenry xplore app has been shortlisted for the final of the prestigious .IE Awards 2023. Led by The Galway Wild Geese, in partnership with Digital Agency, Upourside and a selection of local business...
Galway Wild Geese – Finalist – Digital Town Awards – 2022
Galway Wild Geese are thrilled to have have been shortlisted in the Community Digital category of the .IE Digital Town Awards. The number and quality of entries was outstanding, so the geese are thrilled to make the shortlist, you can view the full...
Portumna Community Come Together to Raise Funds for Irish Emergency Alliance – Ukraine Humanitarian Relief
On Saturday, 9th April, 2022, Galway Wild Geese will host a fundraiser at Portumna Market Square in aid of the Irish Emergency Alliance. Donations are welcome - home baking, home made crafts, books, cds, albums, curio. Donations can be dropped off at the square on...
Towns
Athenry
Gort
Kinvara
Loughrea
Portumna
Woodford
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