New ‘virtual town square’ created with website for Kilkenny town

Bill Gates has likened the internet to a global town square.
Urlingford.ie, Urlingford’s new community website, will take that further and become a virtual town square for the locality, bringing people together and building community.

Fiona Joyce, a member of the Urlingford Town Team, has coordinated this new website. She said the vision for the community website is “that it will connect locals and visitors to people, to clubs, to services, to organisations, to amenities and to businesses in the area. It will make life in the town just that bit easier by allowing anyone, fifth generation Urlingforder and recent arrival alike, to get straight to the information and the people they want or need.

“Getting involved, for whatever reason, will never be easier!”
Urlingford.ie officially launches at this year’s AGM of the Urlingford Town Team, at the end of November.

Fiona says that ‘designing the website was a community collaboration in itself. The Urlingford.ie logo was selected by the entire community’. A number of possibilities were put to a vote with the one being selected, winning by a country mile!

“The over-arching theme of the website is ‘Making Connections’. Urlingford has long been associated with connecting people, whether by Bianconi coach, bus, through the distribution of newspapers or road building through the ages and right up to today."

Fiona pointed out that when you’re on a long drive you might need to know what is available in towns along your route, a snack, a coffee, a fuel stop or even somewhere for the kids to stretch the legs and let off steam. With Urlingford.ie, the decision to stop off in Urlingford will be made much easier.

Urlingford.ie will offer an easy way for passers-by to find out about amenities and services in the town. They might even decide to get in a few hours’ work in Exit 4 Remote Working Hub.

Urlingford.ie is an initiative of the Urlingford Town Team and forms part of a suite of projects the team committed to when they formed. The projects are in keeping with the Town Team’s vision of an attractive, safe, prosperous, inclusive, respectful and empowered community.

To date the Town Team has developed and is running Exit 4 Urlingford, the first fully dedicated and community run remote working hub in Kilkenny, and is currently working to refurbish the local community centre.

“A really nice feature of the website is the availability of a community blog,” Fiona said. “This space will be available to community organisations and businesses to use to promote their own events, key dates, people or particular causes.  Expect to read about local matches, funding drives or other locally relevant information.”

In the run up to Christmas, Urlingford Town Team are promoting #ShopLocal and will make use of the blog for this very purpose. It has been shown that every €10 spent locally generates more than €40 of benefit to the local community in terms of employment.

The Team asks that everyone commits to buying at least one small gift locally, a stocking-filler, a kris-kindle gift or a teacher present for example. The options are endless given the range of businesses in the town, from hardware, pharmacy, supermarkets, hairdressers, barbers, beauticians, drapery and the many cafés and eateries. There really is no excuse to not pick up some of your Christmas shopping locally.

The Urlingford Town Team are delighted to present this website to the community and to finally have that virtual town square for the town.