Dunmore East Fisheries Local Action Group (FLAG) and Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) design students are collaborating on the development of a new brand identity for the regeneration of Dunmore East Harbour. The project called ‘Casagh na Taoide – Turning the Tide’ is EC funded via the South East FLAG and Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM) and will give a vision of what the beautiful fishing village and community of Dunmore East can aspire to in the future.
Michael Kennedy a Spokesperson for the Dunmore East FLAG said “The first step in launching a new era for Dunmore East is creating a brand to identify all that is best in the village, which we can use to promote local enterprise and projects under. We were fortunate in securing the agreement of WIT to work with us and we now have a selection of 15 brilliant and diverse branding proposals from the design students for the regeneration of the harbour, together with a further three designs for the Micro-Enterprise Centre.”
The designs will all be unveiled at an exhibition in ‘The Cliff’ beside the ‘Strand Inn’ on Thursday, 27th March at 7pm. The exhibition is the first step of the consultation process with the community on the regeneration of the local economy and attendees will be given the opportunity to vote for their favourite design. The winning design will be used in all future promotion of Dunmore East Harbour. Voting will take place from Friday, 28th to Monday, 31st March, between 10am and 5pm each day.
Joy Rooney a Lecturer and the Project Co-ordinator at WIT said, “Our students are currently studying the BA (Hons) Design (Visual Communications) programme at WIT. They were struck by the distinctive heritage, natural beauty and great potential in the harbour. The challenge was to envision the harbour into a hub of life, creativity and sustainable maritime enterprise and employment. They are acutely aware of the economic situation which forces many young graduates to emigrate from towns and villages in the region and welcomed the opportunity to work on a live project where their design skills could create a vision and a voice for a community”.
The design students worked with the Dunmore East FLAG; a team of five lecturers and design industry project partners. Design studios Foundry and Marla, together with print industry partner DVF, provided industry workshops. The two winning designs (Harbour Regeneration and Micro-Enterprise Centre), will be developed online and offline, with both design studios providing internships for the winning design students.
Trudy McIntyre, Chairwoman of Dunmore East FLAG said “The initiative is all-inclusive. As part of that objective, the primary school children of Dunmore East have been asked to envisage what their village will look like in future. It’s our children’s vision of the village in which they will, we hope, be able to live and work in the future.”
The exhibition will be opened by Marian O’Neill, Head of the Department of Creative and Performing Arts at WIT.
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