Granby Park was a temporary park that was built on a vacant site in Dublin’s north inner city in August 2013. It was open for 1 month. It was made from up-cycled, recycled, donated & found materials and was a collaboration between some of the city’s artists, event coordinators, architects, performers and creatives.

Built & co-ordinated completely voluntarily, almost 400 volunteers and 1,100 supporters helped create Granby Park which was visited by 40,000 people. Granby Park demonstrated not only an alternative model to the way that we use vacant sites but also an innovative platform for citizens, local government, local community, business, creative professionals and artists to work together. The city council played a valuable role in providing the site and negotiating legal & bureaucratic hurdles.

The park consisted of a polytunnel education hub space, 30 artist installations, a cafe, a children’s play area, a 300-person palette amiphitheatre, grafitti wall & boules pitch, surrounded by planting and furniture. For one month, Granby Park played host to a multitude of exhibitions, installations, events and community activities.

Samuel Bishop is a founding member of Upstart whose interests lie in enabling creative events in public space. Samuel is also co-ordinator of the nationwide street party with Streetfeast. He builds parks with Upstart. He also runs events with Happenings.

Peter Carroll is SAUL Course Director, Director of A2 Architects () and Treasurer of DoCoMoMo Ireland () A2 Architects along with Sean Harrington Architects collaborated with Upstart on the design and execution of Granby Park last summer.