Search Results for 'City status in Ireland'

Last Thursday, President Michael D. Higgins gave a powerful thought-provoking speech to an online (via Webex) meeting of people of all ages drawn from a wide strata of local society on why the movement towards transforming Galway into a National Park City is so crucial at this particular time in human history due to unprecedented climate change, biodiversity loss and pandemics, and why it can be a template for other cities in Ireland to follow.

There aren’t many machines that can keep going all day. Or workers. Or products. Legislation wouldn’t permit it. For that matter there aren’t many towns that can offer as much at night as they do during the day. When darkness falls, the natural attractions which bring people into places are shrouded in a lack of light and rendered inhospitable. Rare are the places that are equally welcoming by day and by night.

One thing a runner focuses on when limbering up at a start line, is the exact position of the finish line. And in the mind’s eye, the runner visualises the acceleration at the start, the pacing and jostling of the runners as they traverse the circuit and then strategise the manoeuvres for the home run with one eye firmly on the finish. And when you know how far away that finish line is, then you get a greater indication of the tactics you use.

Galway has become the only Irish city, and one of only five cities in the world, to be designated a UNESCO City of Film. The winning of the title could also prove “enormously beneficial” to the city’s on-going bid to be named European Capital of Culture 2020.  

Galway is follow the examples of Limerick, Cork and Dublin when the new Galway social space opens this weekend.