EDUCATION / 13
HORTICULTURE, EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY
IN BLAKESTOWN DRIVE, DUBLIN 15
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n 2016, Rachel Freeman wrote of the role of horticultural education within communities in Ireland and the wide ranging benefits for community, students and the industry. In this follow up article she reviews the impacts of those engagements five years on. The 2016 article described a community project with Blakestown Drive Community Group with horticulture students from Technological University Dublin Blanchardstown Campus, focusing on the role horticulture education can play in wider society, on the benefits of learning for students outside the university and for the community and local school. The article also highlighted challenges and positive social impacts of community green space. In the period since much has changed, and looking at the impacts five years on there is much more to consider, this green educational injection into the local Dublin 15 community had a ripple effect few could have imagined. But in order to look forward we
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must first look back. The first year students of September ‘15 engaged in a community horticulture module as part of their practical learning, which was unusual as this was off campus in Dublin 15, with a community and school, acting as the client. Community engaged learning is unique in allowing students to engage in learning in a real world environment, with a real client. Outside the shelter of the classroom, they encounter challenges that provide opportunities to hone their skills, work as a team and engage in problem solving. They become familiar with the iterative process of developing a project, with the added complexity of doing it with a client, and in the community. Students took the opportunity to design and build, working alongside their client at all stages of the process, and transferred knowledge, allowing the community to maintain the space once finished. The Dublin 15 community, the Blakestown Drive Community Group (BDCG), seized the opportunity to learn from and to
HORTICULTURECONNECTED / www.horticultureconnected.ie / Summer 2021
