The course starts on Thursday 13th January and will run on Thursdays 7-9pm

This Innovating Communities Course will maximise and harness Ballymote’s potential by training participants in Design Thinking, which is a creative problem solving process, and bringing likeminded people together to examine the Ballymote and the surrounding areas’ challenges and come up with solutions.

Ballymote is a town located in South Sligo. It is a reasonably busy business town, with a unique selling points of being on the main Dublin-Sligo. This course focuses on a challenge of bringing together a number of different community groups in Ballymote working in silos, that have not yet found a joined up approach.

New challengers are welcome to join at any point, request to join and the Trainer will get in touch to make sure you are up to speed.

Innovating Communities courses are led by Design Thinking experts and community volunteer 'co-trainers' to help training teams tackle projects like these.

Our Design Thinking training teaches valuable skills that can be used to create people-centred, innovative plans in response to challenges or opportunities like the one above. You will also have access to 1-on-1 mentoring from your trainer and co-trainer. Co-trainers are volunteers from your county with knowledge and/or experience in community action.

The schedule will be determined once an interested Team have registered their interest and are ready to begin. The Course length can vary between 21 and 42 hours of training based on the availability of the Team and the weight of the Challenge. You and your Team will be expected to commit to weekly training sessions, typically 2 hours in length. The team will also conduct community research and outreach during various stages of the course, between sessions.