When: 5 July, 1-2pm

Where: Market Place Shopping Centre, Clonmel

Click here to book your free ticket through the Clonmel Junction Arts Festival website!

Do you live in or near Clonmel, or are you attending the Clonmel Junction Arts Festival? Our July Reimagine Café provides an opportunity for people to come together to reimagine the future of retail in Clonmel town centre in a creative environment.

As part of the Clonmel Junction Arts Festival, this café will meet in the former Superquinn shopping centre. Together, we will ponder and discuss a question facing many towns around Ireland: what happens when the shops sell up?

Trade has been a primary function of most of our towns, yet with the prevalence of cars, out-of-town retail and online shopping, many places face a major crisis of vacancy and dereliction. Could a thoughtful refocus on lived-in, walkable urban communities create a new era for the Irish town? 

This Café will be hosted by Emily-Ann Gilligan.

Bio:

Emily-Ann Gilligan MRIAI is an architect and director at CANICE Architects. Prior to founding CANICE Architects, Emily-Ann worked in London for award-winning architecture practices. She is a registered architect in both the UK and Ireland. She acts as an external architecture critic at Irish and international universities and is an ongoing contributor to the professional Architecture Ireland publication. Her Masters project explored the decline of retail in our cities and the regeneration of vacant sites and was awarded the Scott Sutherland Purchases Prize.

In her practice she is interested in the collaboration of the arts and architecture. CANICE Architects have gained a reputation for high quality adaptive reuse projects within historically sensitive sites and bringing a contemporary artistic approach to vacant buildings and brownfield sites. Emily-Ann is passionate about carving out more public space from the existing fabric of our settlements. She holds a strong focus on the connection of the built environment and natural environment with the aim of developing human centric and liveable settlements.

About Reimagine:

The Reimagine Café is a monthly online or in-person gathering created by the Irish Architecture Foundation for all those involved in placemaking and reimagining their built environment. Reimagine is funded by the Arts Council, the Department of Rural and Community Development, and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Reimagine was made possible through seed funding by the Creative Ireland Programme’s National Creativity Fund.

Photos: (top) by Kevin O’Sullivan of the Market Place Shopping Centre’s empty supermarket, during a rehearsal for the play Everything Must Go! by Aideen Wylde and Donal Gallagher. Courtesy of Clonmel Junction Arts Festival. The play will be performed during the festival.

(bottom) Emily-Ann Gilligan, courtesy of Emily-Ann Gilligan.