Our 2025 Events
Waterford Learning City at Spraoi Festival 2025
- August 02, 2025
We’re thrilled to share highlights from the ‘soft launch’ of Waterford as a UNESCO Learning City at this year’s Spraoi Festival!
Citizen voice is a foundational element of our Waterford Learning City identity. Our presence at Spraoi was about raising awareness of our exciting news and, crucially, to ask for your feedback on how Waterford can create a continued culture of lifelong learning and curiosity.
Festival goers were encouraged to write a “Dear Waterford” postcard, sharing their ideas, suggestions, and feedback directly with us.
Our large, custom-built Post Box—was a huge hit! We are very grateful to our WWETB partners and the talented student apprentices who created this fantastic, sustainable piece of work.
From young to old and everyone in between, we received an abundance of imaginative and thoughtful postcards. These ideas are now helping to shape our strategy and will be instrumental in developing initiatives that truly resonate with the needs and aspirations of the people of Waterford.
Thank you to everyone who participated!
Waterford Learning City’s first Community of Practice
In May, we held an inaugural Waterford Learning City Community of Practice session. This gathering served as a fantastic introduction, bringing together a snapshot of key stakeholders from the Waterford Learning City Working group to share knowledge, exchange ideas, and begin collaborating on the future direction of Waterford as a Learning City.
Our approach to the Waterford Learning City initiative is firmly rooted in creating these active Community of Practices (CoPs). These forums are where cross-organisational collaboration is not just encouraged but actively celebrated. By breaking down silos, we can pool our resources and creativity to deliver the most impactful initiatives for the people of Waterford.
This first meeting was just the beginning! We look forward to hosting more of these collaborative sessions in the coming months, and to creating new CoPs focused on specific learning themes.