New Identity for Sligo (Ireland)

The legacy of the poet WB Yeats was developed during a one-year Cultural Planning Residency by Lia Ghilardi. Our work, together with MCO Architects, involved advising key stakeholders from planning, tourism, culture and economic development on how to work in a joined-up way to deliver the new master plan for Sligo city, based on the area’s distinctive cultural resources. Sligo (city and county) has a number of high-profile assets capable of responding to the needs of local communities and of attracting national and international interest (e.g. the Yeats legacy, archaeological sites and local landscape). However, such key resources needed to be brought into a more productive and contemporary framework of action, and this is what our residency achieved. Since then, Sligo has led on a number of international networking projects aimed at showcasing the creative capacity of the north-west of Ireland.