Toward a Creative Dún Laoghaire

The Towards a Creative Dún Laoghaire project, funded by the Creative Ireland Creative Communities Economic Development Fund, provided the opportunity for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council (DLR) and the Institute of Art, Design & Technology’s (IADT) Public Design Lab to conduct research into the local creative economy and explore the developing relationship between the partners. The design of the project was determined by the principles of the PDL, guided by founders, Clyde Doyle and Peter Evers, researchers, Ella Fitzpatrick and Justyna Doherty employed co-design tools and strategies to reach as many stakeholders as possible using a range of formats for communication and engagement.

A variety of public engagement activities took place; a week-long charrette workshop, coffee morning, expert panel discussion and 1:1 interview with stakeholders.

Interdisciplinary and intergenerational collaborations allowed the researchers to capture important insights and facilitate discussions about the creative economy. The conversations served both as a method of data collection and as an accelerator in terms of building relationships between the stakeholders, which was a valuable outcome of the strategic design of this research study.

Research Methods included:

● Design Thinking

● Speculative Design

● Systems Thinking

● Future Thinking


Tools included:

● Stakeholder mapping / stakeholder value maps

● Context mapping

● Brain writing

● Idea filtering

● Storyboarding

● Worldbuilding

● Affinity map

● Research sense-making workshop

A six-month inter-disciplinary research initiative from June 2022 to December 2022 aligned to the PDL’s desire for advanced research with a positive social and environmental impact.