Our story so far

Playful Paradigm. 2018 – 2020
In 2018 Cork City was selected to be part of an EU URBACT transfer learning programme Playful Paradigm. Udine, a city on northern Italy had been using play for over 20 years to support the work of its municipal council and had also analysed the impact of this way of working with its local university. As a Healthy City, it had also used play to engage with hard to reach communities. Along the way it devised a series of playful interventions and these were shared with the participating cities.

In 2018, Cork had at that point no formal culture of play or an understanding of its potential as a level for societal change. A diverse steering group was required for participation in the project. A public forum was created to launch the project and invite participation. 100 people from across the city attended the Play forum and from this the steering group was formed.

Over the next two years a series of European study visits and local dissemination of the insights led to the establishment of several pilot projects involving play. Despite Covid, the group managed to continue evildoing and implementing novel play related ideas to address social isolation, environmental change and develop place making approaches to enhance community development. Our work was featured at several conferences, (URBACT Cities Festivals) UN World Family Summit, and documented by URBACT as an example of best practice.

Let’s Play Cork 2021 onwards
Let’s Play Cork, was established as a as a means to continue the work of play development in Cork. Let’s Play Cork exists to deliver and support policies, events, programmes and projects that use Play as a strategy for engaging stakeholders in activating public spaces. The steering group was expanded and Healthy Ireland funded a part time coordinator role.

In 2021, Cork was invited to pilot the first ever intra country URBACT transfer leaning programme. We became the lead city for the National playful Towns Initiative, working with 5 other Irish towns (Donegal town, Sligo town, Rush, Port Laoise and Rathdrum) to encourage their use of play as a tool for community engagement and urban activation.

Let’s Play Cork worked on a policy level to influence the Cork City Development Plan, our submission was accepted and the plan incorporated play into the strapline and also underpins this with several commitments in both community and placemaking initiatives.

Let’s Play Cork also launched a Community Play bag, in each of the 10 city libraries, as a way of disseminating play into the communities. Incjunction with this a training programme was developed to train Community Play Leaders,  who facilitate free play events in their communities.

We strategically targets festivals as another means to increase awareness of the project and engage with the public. Pop up play events now feature at many of the cities festivals – adding a facility friendly engagement activities to their programmes.

Playful placemaking approaches were also developed, the steering group participated in a 6 week training programme and then worked with local planners, community groups and river users to develop strategies for activating blue play in and adjacent to the bank of the river Lee.

In 2023, through Healthy Ireland funding, a Play Development role was enabled. Martin O Donoghue was appointed for a two year part time post. This post is hosted by Meitheal Mara & MArtin works across the City and County, with Skibbereen being the first town in the county to pilot a playful town approach to community development.