Event: A Playful City International Conference 2017

This event might be of interest to some:

We’d love for you to join us on October 17th at Point Village for Design meets Play – an immersive conference that at the intersection of planning, architecture, children’s rights, sustainability, design and more.

Join international thought leaders, local experts,and a diverse mix of attendees of all ages and perspectives to discuss the serious business of play. Together, we will merge theory and practice – as the ideas developed will feed into the design and implementation of playful interventions in Dublin in Spring 2018.

A bit more about A Playful City

Design Meets Play is part of A Playful City, an initiative designed and produced by Connect the Dots & Upon a Tree, supported by KLM along with partners Science Gallery, UCD – Geography Department, Sean Harrington Architects, Leave No Trace, Waterways Ireland, UNICEF, Early Childhood Ireland, Early Learning Initiative (National College Ireland), GoCar, Henry J Lyons Architects, Recreate, Outsider Magazine, Totally Dublin, StreetFeast, Joined Up, and Institute of Designers Ireland.

Top 5 reasons to come –

1. The People

Our aim at A Playful City is for a diverse group of stakeholders to converge and help make our vision a reality within Dublin. Attending the Design meets Play conference means you will have the opportunity to not only meet, but to meaningfully engage with and learn from stakeholders never all in the same room before – hailing from diverse sectors spanning design to academia to sustainability to architecture to urban planning to children’s rights, and more.

2.  The Conversation

We have 20 speakers of all ages and from all over the world discussing their unique views on the world of play, all of which are authorities in their own field. Discussions will cover a host of topics ranging from; children in the city; play and psychology; engagement, architecture, design and the right to play to name just a few of the conversations that will take place on the day.

Speaker highlights include:

• Turner Prize Winner, Assemble Collective (Amica Dall)

• President of European Network of Child-Friendly Cities (Adrian Voce)

• Children’s Rights Advocate and Researcher (Jackie Bourke)

• Director of Play Scotland (Marguerite Hunter Blair)

• Head of Interventions of Superuse Studios in the Netherlands (Jos de Krieger)

• Baltic Street Adventure Playground (Robert Kennedy)

• Professor of Land Use Planning and Urban Studies (Marketta Kyatta)

• UNICEF youth representative (Diana Oprea)

3. The Experience

Unlike most conferences where audiences are passive observers, the Design meets Play experience will be one of interaction. It will be an adventure, with audience participation throughout, ranging from questions to bright ideas, a host workshops, city walks and interactive panels. We want to ignite those brain receptors and get our audience learning, understanding and creating playfully.

4. The Space

On the day we will apply our vision of playful city  to the Point Village. It will be transformed into a spontaneous and vibrant space – its curious corners scenes of inspiration.  This alternative conference experience with its popcorn drain pipes and candyfloss clouds will help you to unlock your inner child and imagine the city differently.

5. The Output

The Design meets Play conference will also differ to other conferences as the end of the day is merely just the beginning. With your help we will have a people-led, bottom-up vision to make Dublin more playful. We will take the learnings shared during the day to ‘hack’ play and develop and implement prototypes for temporary interventions in proposed sites in Dublin with the potential to scale.

Your next steps?

• Register here to play your part in creating a more playful, inclusive, and child-friendly Dublin! The first 100 people to register will get a playful surprise on the day. Do email us if you’re interested in a group rate.

• Please share this with your networks. We’d particularly love if you could share this with other colleagues, relevant departments, and ystudents. If you have a newsletter, we’d be really grateful if you could share it there as well.

• Get out and play! How did you used to play? How about now? What kind of play would you like to see in Dublin? Share your ideas on our Twitter @aplayfulcity, our Facebook (A Playful City), and our instagram!

 

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Event: South Dublin County Public Participation Network Housing Conference, Louis Fitzgerald Hotel 02 October

This event might be of interest to some:

The primary aim of this conference is to highlight and seek solutions to the national housing and homelessness crisis as it relates to availability and affordability of housing as it impacts on South Dublin County. In doing so we hope to provide clarity with regard to the existing housing context, identify barriers to the resolution of the housing crisis, both at a policy and implementation level, and make policy and implementation recommendations that will enable central and local government to deliver its housing targets. The conference will also act to strengthen the capacity of the SDCPPN to contribute to housing strategy at local government level. A number of housing experts will provide the context of the national and local housing policy and implementation issues, and offer solutions to the crisis. We will hold parallel workshops aimed at offering the space for individuals to express their solutions as the SDCPPN develop a position on housing which can be referenced in the relevant arenas within South Dublin County Council.

09:30am – Registration and Refreshments

10:00am – Chair Anna Lee – Welcome note

10:05am – Aiden Lloyd – setting the context

10:30am – Simon Brooke – National Housing Policy

11:00am – South Dublin County Council – Strategy to deliver social housing in South Dublin, including challenges and constraints

11:30am – Orla Hegarty – Solutions to Affordability

12:00pm – The workshops

• • Social housing
  • Traveller accommodation
  • Disability and Housing Needs
  • Homelessness

13:00pm – Lunch

13:45pm – Feedback from workshops by Siobhan Lynam

14:30pm – Rory Hearne – Housing Approaches and Rebuilding Ireland

15:00pm – Panel discussion with Simon Brooke, Orla Hegarty, Rory Hearne with Q&A

15:30pm – Final comments and closing

 

Event: Workshop – The New Urban Ruins: Vacancy and the Post-Crisis City (Trinity College Dublin 1-3 March)

Full programme available here.newurbanruinsworkshopfinalprogr2602

 

Event: Public Lecture – ‘Serial Forced Displacements in the American City’. Prof. Mindy Fullilove. Friday 14 Oct 2.30-5.00pm

Coffee – From 2.30 pm

Lecture – 3pm

HAUGHTON LECTURE THEATRE, MUSEUM BUILDING, TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN

As part of the symposium organised by Karen Till (Maynooth University), Mapping Spectral Traces: The Place of the Wound, Professor Mindy Fullilove will give a public lecture on Friday afternoon 14 October in Trinity College. Prof. Fullilove is an amazing speaker and activist, as well as public and social health expert. No registration is necessary. Hope to see you there.

Professor Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD HON AIA, is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Public Health at Columbia University and Professor of Urban Policy and Health at The New School in New York. Dr. Fullilove has conducted research on AIDS and other epidemics of poor communities, with a special interest in the relationship between the collapse of communities and decline in health. She has also published numerous articles, book chapters, and monographs, and has worked with planners, designers and architects on projects linking communities to healthy urban ecologies. Her book publications include Root Shock: How Tearing up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It (2005, One World) and Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted-Out Cities (2013, New Village Press).

 

Event: People’s Housing Forum Part 2: Strategies to end the crisis (Saturday January 30th)

30 January 2016: Teacher’s Club, Parnell Square. 9.30am-2pm

Following on from the first People’s Housing Forum, which took place on 28 November 2015, the second People’s Housing Forum will take place on 30 January 2016 in the Teacher’s Club, Parnell Square. This series of events is organised by Housing Action Now and the Irish Housing Network and seeks to build a collaborative and bottom-up approach to tackling the pressing housing emergency. The People’s Housing Forum also build on the discussions during the Towards a Real Housing Strategy event held on 1 Octover 2015, a synopsis of which can be read here. In the first People’s Housing Forum, those involved firstly worked towards identifying the current problems relating to different components of the housing system, and secondly towards identifying a set of concise People’s Housing Demands. A summary of the demands identified by the groups are as follows:

Homelessness

1. Modulars are not a solution. Open vacant Council properties (voids) and transfer suitable NAMA properties.
2. Create 24hr community and resource centres for homeless families and individuals. These centres would have 3 functions: a place to be warm and have access to food and cooking facilities; a place to use resources such as computers, charge phones, and have general access to facilities; a place to make contact with frontline physical and mental health services
3. It was felt in this workshop that provision for homelessness was left solely in hand of private enterprise and charities when it is a public crisis. Our last demand was an end to government’s reliance on private services for the relief of public need.

Private Rental Demands

1. Rent controls and rent freezes tied to inflation and income
2. Strengthen Tenants Rights: Lift barriers to access and end discrimination. Strengthen tenants rights regarding probation,conditions of dwelling, evictions. Enforce these rights.
3. Create infrastructure for tenants to exercise power. Independent organisation for support, information, and representation and change PRTB structure to a tenants focused organisation.
4. Break from the markets and stop subsidising landlords and private ownership. Build and keep public and social housing affordable and in ownership of public authorities.

Migrants and Direct Provision Demands

1. End Direct Provision. End all institutionalised refugee provision.
2. Let those in Direct Provision, refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants work, access education, and live in Irish society. Tackle profiteering and standard of care. End forced transfers.
3. Create support infrastructure for those leaving direct provision and refugee centres. Grant full state rights including education, housing, social and community supports and health services. A place where everyone can access necessary information about their rights.
4. Take a firm anti racism position and tackle scape goating of migrant peoples.

Mortgages and Evictions Demands

1. No economic evictions. Bring in meaningful and long lasting rent controls and security of tenure
2. Create a community land trust and use it to write off debt. This would be overseen independently and not by banks.
3. Create support for those facing courts.
4. Change constitution to emphasise and enforce public good and right to housing over protection of private property.
5. Use creative and artistic ways to educate people on their rights relating to housing and change culture.

Social Housing Demands

1. Good quality secure housing as a human right. Supply the housing that is needed (which meets actual housing stock need) through Public Housing Agencies. Take housing stock provision out of the hands of councils.
2. Challenge government and private sector propaganda. Clarify and promote the ideology of housing rights groups.
3. Promote and implement practical measures to raise funding and delivery of housing. i.e. allocating USC to public housing building.

Traveller Accommodation Demands

1. Recognise Traveller Ethnicity
2. Set up Independent Traveller Accommodation Agency to deliver and ensure equality and rights in standards of accommodation and facilities. This body would also maintain halting sites and guarantee standard of facilities.
3. Fire safety analysis carried out on all sites.

The event on Saturday 30 January will seek to build upon these demands and develop strategies to end the housing crisis. Anyone interested in the issue of housing, please come along and join the discussion. Details are below.

The housing crisis has become an out-of-control housing emergency.

From rent hikes to evictions to homelessness, the very idea of the home is under fierce attack.
The People’s Housing Forum believes that communities, activists and all interested groups should work together to challenge this crisis and organise for the guaranteed right to housing for everyone.

Join us at the People’s Housing Forum on January 30th at the Teacher’s Club on Parnell Square to discuss strategies for organising for the right to housing. This will take the form of power structure analysis workshops, where we will collectively look at the people actually making the decisions around housing, and who actually has the power. Then we will discuss how we can organise and come together to challenge that power, and end this crisis. PSA’s are an extremely useful tool for mapping out campaigns, and we will be looking at the issues and power brokers in Social Housing; Private Rental Accomodation; Homelessness; Mortgages & Evictions; Traveller Accommodation; Migrants & Direct Provision.

The previous People’s Housing Forum was held on November 28th , and the goal was to agree upon a common set up demands across those different dimensions of the housing sector. For more information, and to see those demands, visit peopleshousingforum.wordpress.com or email us at housingactionireland@gmail.com.

Registration will begin at 09:30 and we will finish at approximately 14:00.

The People’s Housing Forum is hosted by Housing Action Now and the Irish Housing Network, in association with the Geography Department of Maynooth University.

Cian O’Callaghan

 

 

Towards a Real Housing Strategy #5: Renting Solutions and Funding Social Housing

Introduction
Situated in Liberty Hall, the Housing Crisis Conference brought together people of all academic, social and political backgrounds to discuss the ongoing crisis occurring in our own backyard. It was essential that at such a conference it was not just academics and public representatives that had the opportunity to voice their opinion, but that ordinary people would also be heard. Families in emergency accommodation, high rents and insufficient government support are issues that were addressed with suggestions of government intervention and an increase in provision of public housing among the solutions discussed. This report will discuss the Renting & Funding Social Housing workshop outlining the issues and solutions deliberated throughout the session. The workshop was facilitated by Dr. Cian O’ Callaghan, Maynooth University, with guest speakers Dr. Lorcan Sirr, Lecturer in housing DIT, Des Derwin, SIPTU Dublin and Simon Brook, Clúid.

“Where have the houses gone?”
Focus Ireland states that in 2014 the number of additional families entering emergency housing in Dublin was 40 a month, doubling from the previous year. January 2015 saw a further increase, with a total of 400 families in Emergency Accommodation. This figure then increased by 76% to 700 families in August. Des Derwin revealed that 1,257 children are included in these 700 families, leaving them with a very unstable life. Drawing on the discussion, Derwin, posed the question of how we have gone from ghost estates, to families sleeping in parks. “Where have the houses gone?” he asked the room. According to a report  published by UCD and DIT, 170,000 houses were left vacant in 2010 following an excess of building during the Celtic Tiger. Five years on, can we really believe that some of these houses are not still available? The discussion reflected on how leaving the provision of housing to the market led to oversupply during the boom but to a deep crisis of inaccessibility and unaffordability during the recession, particularly as mortgages have dried up, rents continue to increase and the numbers of people left homeless continues to rise. Shelter, or housing, should be seen as a basic human right and this was highlighted on numerous occasions throughout the workshop.

 

Towards a Real Housing Strategy #4: The possibility of using NAMA as a solution to the housing crisis

The purpose of the housing conference in Liberty Hall on Saturday 3rd October was to come together to work Towards a Real Housing Strategy. It was a structured forum for activists, academics and the wider public to engage with each other and bring together their own knowledges of the current housing question so that we can better understand it and discuss what should be done in order to address it.

Activists from Housing Action Now, the North Dublin Bay Housing Crisis Committee, Inner City Helping Homeless, the Peter McVerry Trust, Right2Change, Mandate, Unite and a number of others, spoke and contributed to the discussion. The experiences and understandings of these groups and individuals added the required grounding to a crisis that can sometimes feel abstracted from the human cost of experiencing housing distress. As well as the ‘traditional’ activists, a number of academics from NUI Maynooth provided a framework allowing us to understand the current housing crisis within broader social, economic and political contexts. With these strands of understanding converging, there is the hope that a strategy for tackling the housing crisis can emerge.

A significant part of the conference was to break into workshops so a dialogue about some of the ‘bigger’ issues could flourish. I broke into the workshop about NAMA. The session started with presentations from Mick Byrne (UCD) and Sinéad Kelly (Geography, Maynooth University) on the existing role of NAMA. Following their presentations, the audience became a workshop group with the discussion focused on how we might better understand NAMA and its potential role in reducing housing inequality in Dublin. Many of the questions posed and ideas considered were inherently about how to alter the use of NAMA for social gain and issues which arise from any desire to do so.

 

Towards a Real Housing Strategy #3: Homelessness could be closer to your own door than you think – Some potential solutions

Since the economic crisis, starting in 2008, there has been a massive increase in the need for social housing across the nation. Figures from 2008-2013 indicate that there are now 100,000 households on social housing waiting lists. It is in response to this and additional problems surrounding housing, that the public conference “Towards a Real Housing Strategy” was held, on Saturday 3rd of October in Liberty Hall in Dublin’s City Centre. It was organised by Housing Action Now with support from charities such as Inner City Helping Homeless (ICHH), and academic and research institutes, including the Geography Department and NIRSA from Maynooth University. The conferences main objective was to create a real strategy to combat what can and should be addressed as “The Irish Housing Crisis” through raising awareness about alternative policies.

The conference brought together a varied mix of people with different interests and backgrounds from academics, activists and people who have been personally affected by the housing crisis; united in a desire for change and for action to be taken to tackle the crisis. The morning presentations given by housing experts, agencies and academics helped set the context from which the Housing crisis emerged, identify the primary problem as the lack of government intervention in providing social housing and regulating the rental sector and their failure to acknowledge a housing crisis.

Away from a statistical and objective perspective a testimony from Danielle, a mother of three left homeless since August exposes the real human suffering brought about by this crisis. Danielle described how she was forced to split up her family and allow her children to stay with relatives after she could not avail of temporary accommodation. In addition she felt that she was often not met with compassion. These figures and personal experiences highlight the deepening economic and social inequalities embedded in Irish society.

 

Towards a Real Housing Strategy # 2: Democratically Deciding A Real Housing Strategy, Really for Real People

The conference “Towards a Real Housing Strategy–Solutions to Ending the Housing Crisis” held in SIPTU Liberty Hall on Saturday, 3 October 2015 opened with a declaration of a housing emergency in Ireland. This declaration came from the likes of Dr. Rory Hearne, a housing expert and previously a Lecturer at Maynooth University, Fr. Peter McVerry of the Peter McVerry Trust, and public representatives from Dublin City Council and Galway City.

Dr. Rory Hearne notes that the most recent government reports released show the severity of the situation: over 100,000 households on the social housing waiting list; 80,000 households on short-term rent support, half of whom aren’t on the social housing lists; 30,000 households on the long-term RAS rent supplement; 50,000 households have received a repossession notice on their mortgage in 2014 and another 100,000 households are in mortgage arrears; and a further uncountable number of households are in poor quality public and private accommodations, possibly tens of thousands. These numbers start to tell the many stories of a deep structure of housing distress in Ireland.

The conference was called by Housing Action Now to create a dialogue, conversation, and ultimately to create strategies and goals for a real housing solution. This agenda created space for conversation in smaller groups for this conference open to the public. The entire afternoon at the conference was devoted to small group conversations to create a list of short and mid-term goals, of strategies for achieving those goals, and to report back to everyone to create a larger call for action.

The outpouring of powerful personal stories shook me, and the tremendously powerful statements by academics and activists well-versed in the issues and possibilities instilled me with a hope, that a right to housing can be brought about by careful planning, good organizing, and deep passion for the issues and for the rights of all people of a place to live, a place to flourish, and a place to call home.

 

Towards a Real Housing Strategy # 1: Lessons from a public conference on the housing crisis

If increasing numbers of rough sleepers aren’t an indication of a housing crisis, then surely the 5000 families in emergency accommodation, the 100,000 households on the social housing list, and the thousands in mortgage distress are. The truth is that Ireland is in the midst of an unprecedented housing crisis.

On 3rd October Liberty Hall provided a venue for the first housing conference where the housing crisis was the only item on the agenda. Individuals across various fields and backgrounds came together with a common aim: ‘a real housing strategy’. These individuals ranged from housing experts, academics in disciplines such as Geography and Sociology, activists and members of the public whom have had direct experience of community representation.

The Crisis
Rory Hearne, Senior Policy Analyst with TASC, introduced the event by providing the latest housing and homelessness statistics. While these statistics described the housing crisis, one number in particular resonated; ‘half a million households are in serious housing difficulty and at risk of homelessness’. Hearne then revealed how Ireland has been branded as a hotspot for investment in residential property markets for international investment funds, which will lead to a more intensified commodification of housing. Without regulation rents will continue to rise, making renting unaffordable for lower and middle income earners, which could force thousands more into homelessness. With the rising pressure from banks issuing court proceedings on households in mortgage distress Hearne pointed out that ‘if only people were treated better than banks there would be debt write-offs for mortgage holders too’. This statement serves to highlight the tendencies of this and past governments to protect bond holders, banks and developers over the majority of the people of Ireland. Hearne believes that Minister Alan Kelly’s national housing strategy is inadequate and advocates for a new housing policy. This could be realised by building a housing movement.