Selina.com Points The Way To Changing Rural Ireland's Liabilities Into Assets

IMAGINE IF - On the journey from my staycation home in Castlegregory #Kerry last week to the Dingle Hub I saw at least 2 vacant historic (ie pre 1910) school buildings along the 30 minute drive.

It was clear even from the road that these buildings were built with care and pride (all have carved name plates and build dates) as they represented an investment by their community in the future of their children, a belief in making things better for the long term for their locality. To use an analogy they were planting trees to give body and life to their dreams of a better world for their next generation.

What if what is currently regarded as a source of rural sadness and loss, symbols of rural dereliction and decay, these empty historic primary school buildings could now be reimagined as economic assets for the locality! A return to their original intention of creating local livelihoods and long term futures.

The world is changing. Imagine if they were repurposed into remote working mini campuses along the lines of Selina.com - in the former classrooms top quality coworking spaces, in a new build at the rear comfortable accommodation facilities.

Then advertise this around the world to attract long term bookings for remote knowledge workers that want to locate for six months or a year to live and work in what we know are amazing locations, spending their money with local small businesses and maybe deciding to move here permanently.

There's a very interesting piece on the sheer scale of available vacant state owned school buildings across rural Ireland here - https://lnkd.in/e-gJu87h and here https://lnkd.in/eTm-pYHw

While the scale of the challenge may appear daunting to continue the tree analogy "The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

#OurRuralFuture - ConnectedHubs.ie#circulareconomy

Extracted from Eoin Costello, Digital Champion at DigitalHQ, post on Linkedin.