Call for Limerick communities to take part in project aimed at reducing carbon emissions

LIMERICK City and County Council is looking for five communities in the Metropolitan area to work on a special project looking at how we can reduce our carbon footprint.

The chosen communities will collaborate with a creative partner in a project known as Decarbonising Together.

The council are looking for five community groups to explore how they can decarbonise, to identify an aspect that matters to them, and to describe a challenge or opportunity relevant to their day-to-day lives and activities.

Decarbonising is about reducing our carbon (CO2) emissions to combat climate change.

"As a society, we need to generate less carbon and find ways to absorb more. This is the major challenge of our lifetimes, but it also brings with it many opportunities for better living and for a healthier, fairer and happier city," said a spokesperson.

Decarbonising Together is funded by Creative Ireland with each community receiving €2,000 and €12,000 for the corresponding creative partners to cover each project. Total project funding is €70,000.

Each group will be paired with an artist or creative industry partner to explore their challenge and tackle climate change in Limerick city. Creative partners can be drawn from a range of fields including design, music, publishing, architecture, film and video, crafts, visual arts, fashion, TV and radio, advertising, literature, computer games and the performing arts.

Some of the questions that will be posed include: What climate challenge matters most in your community? How could your community start to make a difference?

The project will focus on learning and doing together, and will use Limerick’s new Citizen Innovation Lab due to open in the New Year on Sarsfield Street, as a collaboration hub.

This is a new space for observation, co-creation and experimentation that places citizen creativity at the heart of Limerick’s mission to decarbonise by 2050.

Successful participants can also access Fab Lab Limerick, a maker space and digital fabrication laboratory run by the School of Architecture at University of Limerick and co-located with the Citizen Innovation Lab.

Sinead Hourigan, Project Manager with Limerick City and County Council said: “‘Decarbonising Together’ will be a great opportunity for communities to engage with climate action in a fun and meaningful way. I’m looking forward to hearing and developing ideas from the communities and how they can be implemented to ensure we all play our part in climate action.”

Helena Fitzgerald, Research Fellow at University of Limerick and CommunityxChange lead said: “It is not just that we decarbonise by 2050 that is important, how it happens is important too. Communities who participate in ‘Decarbonising Together’ can creatively engage with climate action in their area with their community and help shape how decarbonisation can happen in Limerick.”

‘Decarbonising Together’ builds on the collaborative work of the +CityxChange H2020 project which is currently underway in Limerick and explores how cities can become climate neutral by 2050.

‘Decarbonising Together’ is supported by Limerick City and County Council, University of Limerick’s Department of Economics and the School of Architecture’s Fab Lab Limerick, with partner companies Colaborativa.eu and Space Engagers.

This project is funded by Creative Ireland through the Creative Climate Action Fund.

For more information and how to apply, log on to MyPoint, Limerick City and County Council’s public engagement platform.

Further queries on the project can be sent to Sinead Hourigan at cityengage@limerick.ie.

An online information session will be held on Wednesday, January 12, 2022 from 7-8pm.

You can register for that session on Eventbrite.