Green Ballymun Community Conference

The Green Ballymun Community Conference took place on Wednesday 29th of November in Trinity Comprehensive School. This aim of this community conference was to provide space to learn and share solutions to reduce emissions in Ballymun as soon as possible.

Image from the Ballymun Community Conference run by Codema. A school sports hall if full of people sitting at round tables, there are colourful posters on the wall in the background

Dublin City Council has been busy developing their new Climate Action Plan. As part of this work the Council has identified Ballymun as a key area for action. The plan is to develop actions to reduce emissions with the Ballymun community. To do so, we need to hear from the local community and this conference was an excellent space to do this.

We heard from a brilliant line-up of speakers:

Grainne Ryan from Environmental Education Unit, An Taisce Climate Ambassador Programme
Eva Cantwell from the Active Travel department of Dublin City Council,
Michelle Nolan of Connecting Cabra
John O’Donoghue of Ballymun Tidy Towns
Dr Robert Egan of Trinity College Dublin
Sustainable Energy Communities Mentor, Ger Doherty

We were joined by local organisations who showed us some of the initiatives happening in the community:

The Rediscovery Centre
Global Action Plan Ireland
The City Farm Ballymun
Ballymun Health & Fitness
Ballymun Biodiversity Action Plan
Dublin City Council’s Active Travel Team
TOMRA Recycling

As well as informative presentations there was time for facilitated discussion where participants had an opportunity to detail what they felt was working well in Ballymun in relation to climate action, what might need to change, what version of Ballymun they’d like to see in 30 years time and actions that could help reach their vision of Ballymun. For a summary of the event, check out the amazing graphic created by Hazel Hurley during the conference.