Pride of Place
Pride of Place All Ireland Competition
Westmeath County Council support and coordinate the pride of place programme at a local level with all Ireland coordination provided by Co-operation Ireland.
This initiative was put in place to celebrate and reward community development activity throughout the island of Ireland and to further encourage networking and information exchange between entrant groups.
Pride of Place 2021
The ‘Pride of Place’ competition is a great chance for local communities in County Westmeath to let Westmeath County Council know about the fantastic work, community spirit and collaboration that makes your village/area/estate/community one of the best places to live. Over the years, the Pride of Place competition has honoured the hard working people who come together to shape, change and enjoy all that is good about their area.
We are very pleased to announce that our two groups representing Westmeath in the National competition are;
- Ballymore Village - Category population 300 - 1000
- Fore Heritage & Amenity Group - Category Community Tourism initiative
The National Competition Awards Ceremony will take place in Killarney in the INEC on Monday 16th May 2022 and we would like to wish our two groups the very best of luck.
This will be a live streamed event where anyone can tune in. Further details of how to access the Live Stream will be available here soon.
Cooperation Ireland Pride of Place
To read more about Cooperation Ireland Pride of Place please visit their website at http://www.cooperationireland.org/whatwedo/prideofplace
Pride of Place 2020
2020's Pride of Place Awards was held online on Saturday 21st November from the website www.prideofplace.ie hosted by Marty Morrissey.
We were delighted to hear that Fore Heritage & Amenity Group came runner up in the Category Community Tourism Initiative.
Fore is a small community working to create a vibrant creative rural tourism collective.
Two years ago the Fore Group established North Westmeath creative Tourism; with the key objectives of involving every member of the community in tourism, foster entrepreneurship and help their volunteers gain training and expertise in tourism.
Their focus has been on the importance of an authentic experience, the extraordinary stories of the people that live there and how they are the most important feature of the area.
Using the concept-‘Wishful Thinking’ the community now use the area to host growing, biodiversity development, sport, wild swimming, angling, painting, found landscape art, dollmaking, stick making, potters, stonemasons, musicians, dancers and events led by children and teenagers.
Tourism and the outdoors are important and helping everyone to play their part and belong to this beautiful creative community is a wonderful experience
This group of people have demonstrated resilience, community spirit and pride in both the people and the place.
Congratulations to Fore Heritage & Amenity Group
Pride of Place 2019
Ballinahown was honoured at the annual Co-operation Ireland Pride of Place awards in Kilkenny on Saturday 30th November.
The village came runner up in the category: population of between 300 and 1000.