Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Open Spaces Project

Fun Day at Dublin City Council.

Our Ty art class went to visit Dublin City Council arts officers in Civic Offices. The idea of the day was to see how DCC works, how they plan for open spaces and also how they are used. Open Spaces are public areas like St Stephens Green, promenades, parks, empty areas between buildings and train stations.



We met our artists Tara , Joanne, & Michelle. They talked to us about our project and showed us the room where we would be doing our presentation at the end of the project. Next we were split up into 2 groups. Ist group went to the planning office where we were told how people apply for planning permission. We also saw the large books that were used for planning permissin before computers. We also learned how the system works and how you can object to plans. The 2nd group went to the traffic control office. There are 180 cameras all around the city center and on the M5o. That's what they use to control and manage the traffic. During rush hour they can change the times of the traffic lights to help ease congestion. They also showed us the new Real Time Bus system - it's a GPS system which tracks the bus and how long it will be to reach its destination.



Afterwards we went to the conference room, where we had different speakers give us presentations. The first person was Anne O'Brien who is the play officer for DCC. Her job is to listen to the voices of young children and teenagers to see what they want to have in their area, and what they think of their area. Anne asked  us about publc space near where we live. We told her that the park closes early and that there is nowhere to go after that.



Killian who is an architect for DCC looks after buildings that DCC owns. He talked about the spaces between buildings and about transport that was purposed like the underground metro, and also new luas lines. He talked about projects he's been working on in and around Grafton St.



Jeremy who works on the Designing Dublin project  http://www.designingdublin.com/ spoke to us about a project he is working on in Clongriffin which is located near Manor House School. The point of his project was to get people thinking about public spaces and empty buildings in Clongriffin. For example a post-it notice board and turned a hoarding into a blackboard where people could leave there opinions. They also used an empty office space as an art gallery for local children and created a sitting room outside for people to come and chat outside and give their opinions.

We enjoyed finding out how traffic control works and seeing the cameras in action. We were interested in the projects they did Clongriffen because they were different and it was relivent to us because we live near by.

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