Tapping the Well of Collective Imagination

During 2023, the Lisdoonvarna community came together with the support of a project team including architect Shelley McNamara, a native of Lisdoonvarna, Fionn Kidney of local social enterprise Common Knowledge, and ACT working in consultation with Lisdoonvarna Failte CLG, to express a future vision for the town rooted in its heritage of wellbeing.

As the culmination of a process involving more than 150 people from the community, rather than a plan, the Tapping the Well vision offers an expression of the community’s most widely shared ambitions, and greatest accompanying wishes, to help guide Lisdoonvarna to a thriving, sustainable and inclusive future.

Lisdoonvarna owes its origins to its life-giving waters and the wellness industry they spurred. The town originally developed and flourished in the mid-19th century as a retreat destination. Recently, despite declining visitors and being bypassed by the Wild Atlantic Way, new efforts are underway to reverse this trend.

Throughout two community engagement workshops and a vision launch and discussion, the vision 2050 Vision for Lisdoonvarna was developed. Stakeholders from throughout the community were invited to participate with radio, newspaper social media and local networks were used to promote the events.

Through the participation of young and old, new and established community members, it became clear that the wells of community, nature and culture also run deep in this town and offer a vast source of personal, social, environmental and economic wellbeing. These ambitions have been visualized to show the thriving sustainable future that is possible.

The vision process was concluded with the production of a large 8 X A0 map that included the communities' key wishes for the future. This was shown at an event where a vision document describing nine shared ambitions was launched. This will now form the blueprint for funding and projects for Lisdoonvarna into the future.