Llŷn IVeragh Ecomuseums

The overall goal of the project was ‘to enable coastal communities to promote their natural and cultural assets, creating opportunities for sustainable tourism, especially outside of the traditional peak tourist seasons.’ This is quite a general goal, but we feel that we have certainly developed tools, resources, and offered examples of how this could be done. With a particular focus on collaborative working, sharing knowledge, and giving equal importance to community and environment, we hope that we have gone some way to increasing the momentum towards a different way of encouraging tourism in our regions. When the project was being designed, we could not have predicted how much the context for tourism would be changed. This completely erased any hope of making a measurable impact on tourism. The three tourism seasons for 2020-2022 inclusive were almost entirely shaped by the effects of the Covid 19 pandemic. 2023 is perhaps our first ‘normal’ tourism season since the start of the project, and unfortunately we are already in the closure period for the project. In running events during the off-seasons and engaging regularly with our surrounding communities, we have certainly tried to build momentum for a more community-led approach to tourism. While we can’t claim that we have made a significant contribution to economic growth in the regions, we have attracted off-season visitors through initiatives such as the Llŷn Archaeological Festival and the Skellig Coast Dark Sky Festival.It has been heartening throughout our activities to hear about the connections made locally as well. We have had people at our events who had never met or had time to chat together but who have made contact through our project activities, which is one of the nicest outcomes of the project. By strengthening these community networks, working with local groups, and creating a space for people with similar interests and concerns but different backgrounds to come together, we hope that the community-led approach to developing tourism will continue into the future. Those of you who have been following our project for some time will be very familiar with our striking and beautiful branding. The development of this brand was inspired by the landscapes of our coastal regions and has been further developed from the ‘LIVE’ brand into distinct brands for the two regions that are still linked in their designs and include many of the same elements and colour schemes. The ‘Ecoamgueddfa’ brand already existed on Pen Llŷn, but it was redesigned within the LIVE project and the Ecoamgueddfa.org website has been updated to mirror the LIVE website. LIVE gave the Ecoamgueddfa partners to opportunity to deepen their network and develop new resources and connections within their ecomuseum model. The ‘Discover Iveragh’ brand is new, but follows the LIVE branding, which had received very positive feedback locally and at trade shows, so it seemed sensible to change very little. We have not developed an ecomuseum on Iveragh… yet. However, there is certainly a model that we can follow. During the project, we also worked closely with the Skye Ecomuseum and a visit from the Skye Ecomuseum Officer and other members of their network provided inspiration to many of the people they met. These things take time and although there is strong support from many members of the community for much of the work of LIVE to continue and to keep working towards an ecomuseum model, other ways of making this happen in the future will now need to be explored. 3. Cross-border working has been one clear success of the project. Our cross-border team met virtually in various different groupings at least once a week. We have shared so many lessons and it has been a real joy to get to know each other’s peninsula and each other. Visits in both directions were obviously very much curtailed during the project but we have managed to introduce our partners to the various communities. Although this will not continue in a structured way through the continuation of the Ireland-Wales programme, personal connections have been made, and an awareness now exists, that will certainly not be lost quickly. We will also continue to promote each other’s regions on our online platforms. 4. The range of resources that we have developed is covered elsewhere in this newsletter. Creating resources is certainly something that we have done with enormous enthusiasm! From pocket guides to help visitors practice Welsh in the pub, to colouring in sheets for kids, videos, itineraries, digital guides, there is so much to explore and it will all be available for many years to come.