From Planning to Prototyping Climate Action
Studio Notes | What We’ve Been Up To
This past month we got the great news that Creative Ireland Climate Action Fund II have approved our proposal “From Planning to Prototyping Climate Action”. The project hopes to apply the service design approach to the complex challenge of facilitating concrete action by sustainable energy communities toward their goals.
We’re joining forces with Connecting Cabra, an established Sustainable Energy Community in Dublin, and being supported by Dublin City Council, Zero Carbon, and CODEMA, the energy efficiency agency for Dublin.
The project will start from a point which many Sustainable Energy Communities have already reached – an energy masterplan for the area. With support from SEAI this plan has been written, and includes vital details about the energy use mix, built environment, and other characteristics of the SEC area including demographics. We’ll be offering the opportunity to SEC’s to share their experience, their progress so far, and anything that stands in their way.
We’ll take those insights and through further research, co-design, blueprinting, and prototype interventions, define services and models which might help achieve transition through actions like retrofitting, behaviour change, circular practices and more. These will be designed specifically with the sustainable energy community in Cabra, but potentially applicable to SEC’s across the country.
Vitally we hope to test these ideas within the scope of the project, and to learn what works and what doesn’t – allowing us to report on these findings to the project partners, to other SEC’s, and to any bodies nationally who might assist in scaling successful models for even greater impact.
Huge thanks are due to the Creative Ireland Climate Action fund, who continue to support design as a pillar of their work with the creative industries. Thanks are due to our project partners for their support, and of course to the community in Cabra for their enthusiasm in partnering on this effort.
We’re dying to get started, and we’d welcome ideas and perspectives from other SECs, from people working in retrofitting or related fields – and you, if you’ve got an idea to share! Get in touch.