Glór na Móna was set up in 2004 as a community development organisation working through the medium of Irish and subsequently developed a strong focus on Irish medium youth work; community education and regeneration; participatory democracy practices; projects focussing on inter-generational family language transmission and social language use; and local community history and heritage recovery. From the start one of our key principles was to link the Irish language community revival to the community development and regeneration sector and to ensure a sustainable language community network for the next generation of Irish speakers in our area.
In June of 2016, we opened our own community hub, Gael-Ionad Mhic Goill, having secured in access of £400,000 of public capital funding from the Irish Language Investment Fund (ciste), Belfast City Council and the Department for Communities in the north of Ireland. As a capital development 5 years in the making, An Ghaelionad was immediately too small to cater for our ongoing project output from the day it opened. The success of An Ghaelionad as community hub has been recognised far and wide and enabled the organisation to undergo significant growth and expansion in project delivery since 2016.
Whilst our current facilities are fantastic, the scale of our growth has created a level of demand that the existing building cannot meet, we have effectively outgrown those facilities. We are now in the process of exploring the potential expansion and development of a new facility that can compliment and enhance what is in place, as such we have recently secured resources through the Department for Communities to appoint S3 Solutions as part of a design team to carry out a Feasibility Study to assess the potential development of a new community facility adjacent to our existing facilities on the Whiterock Road.
The Glór na Móna vision for the site is as follows:
‘A vibrant multipurpose Irish medium hub with families and young people at the heart of it. Driving Youth, community, heritage and Wellbeing in Upper Springfield area and across the City.’
The purpose of the Feasibility Study is to identify local needs, explore any gaps in existing provision and assess the viability of a number of potential development options for the site which is currently owned by Belfast City Council who are committed to making the site available for community use. This process will then establish a preferred option for development that could be taken forward by Glór na Móna for the site based on the findings.
Extensive community consultation will underpin the Feasibility Study to help inform the need and demand for a potential community facility development. This will include engagement with local residents, community / voluntary organisations, statutory agencies, political representatives and other key stakeholders.
In order to ensure that the Feasibility Study is aligned to and best meets the needs of the local community, this online questionnaire will provide an initial opportunity to help shape the project. Following this questionnaire there will also be an opportunity to take part in local engagements, for more information on these please contact michael@s3solutions.co.uk
The questionnaire takes around 10 minutes to complete and your response will be anonymous so please be as honest as possible. Thank you for taking the time to complete this short questionnaire.
