Our Balbriggan Hackathon

“The changing face of Balbriggan” was developed as a community hackathon, where participants explored key challenges facing the town of Balbriggan and created new ideas to overcome these challenges.

Balbriggan is located on the northern edge of Dublin. It is a coastal location, approximately 32 km north of Dublin city centre. Balbriggan has experienced huge population growth since the 2000’s. As one the fastest growing, youngest and most culturally diverse towns in Ireland, these rapid changes bring exciting opportunities for Balbriggan, but also present a number of key challenges. The Hackathon was based around these 3 key challenges:

1. Economic Challenge: How do we make Balbriggan an investment destination?
2. Culture Challenge: How do we foster and develop a thriving creative arts and culture sector?
3. Community Challenge: How do we build a stronger, cohesive and vibrant community?

The Hackathon hybrid event was held both online and in person at the Bracken Court Hotel located at the heart of Balbriggan.  The day involved learning about the town of Balbriggan, hearing from guest speakers and learning how to create, develop and pitch idea’s. With support from event facilitators and mentors, the team’s worked together throughout the day and finally had an opportunity to and present their idea’s to the judges. The winning pitch was for the establishment of a community 'ThinkTank' which will aim to further strengthen civic pride again through the development of a regular community podcast, town hall workshops & innovative and ongoing ways to engage and support regular community conversations.

The schools Hackathon combined a series of workshops which were delivered to the students in collaboration with the Academy of the near Future and What the Hack, organisations which engage the public in seeking solutions to challenges they face.

We had participation from 3 schools Ardgillan Community School, Bremore Educate Together Secondary School and Coláiste Ghlór na Mara, reaching a total of 97 students.

The students were mentored to create innovative solutions to answer the question “How can we build a stronger, cohesive and more vibrant community?”

Through workshops given by Academy of the near Future and What the Hack, the students learned about how new technology and innovation can improve our communities and they developed their own creative ideas to tackle local issues.

Finally the students 'pitched’ their ideas to a panel of judges with a prize for the best concept. The team from Coláiste Ghlór na Mara came up with a solution which aimed to tackle food waste with the development of a platform to educate people about food waste and meal preparation, and prompt them to make changes to their food consumption habits.

Know more at Our Balbriggan.

Written by Kiera Dillon (Fingal County Council).