People of Navan are its greatest asset, #LoveNavan meeting hears
Introduction to #LoveNavan meeting, 27th February 2019, St Mary's Community Centre, Navan
Welcome everybody, and thank you for coming and showing an interest in tonight’s meeting.
For those of you who do not know me, my name is John Donohoe. I am a journalist with the Meath Chronicle, and have worked in the town for most of the past 25 years.
I want to emphasis however, from the outset, that tonight is not about me or the Meath Chronicle.
It’s about Navan, and you, the people who live and work in Navan.
But I have to set the context of the gathering, and why we are here. Last August, I penned an article in the paper in which I ‘went to town on the town’ asking ‘Does Anyone Care about Navan?’
I soon realised people did – as they stopped me on the streets to comment on it. A week later, I put the piece on our websites and social media, where it gained a much greater audience and reaction, and again proved that people do care about our county town.
Out of that grew a gathering of like-minded people who are here tonight who wanted to draw on this wave of positivity there is about the town.
Something else I want to stress about tonight is that we want it to be about positivity. Tonight, we are looking at all the good points of Navan, the strong points, the potential of the town. We’ve done our giving out, our grumbling, our ranting. In this new era of mindfulness, we’re leaving all our bad thoughts outside the door.
Instead, we want to build on all that is good about Navan. There is lots that is good about Navan, lots of great things going on about the town, lots of marvellous clubs and societies, organisations and individuals.
There is also an amazing natural and built heritage – from the rivers Blackwater and Boyne, to Athlumney Castle and Donaghmore tower, to the old buildings in the town, bridges and mills, and parks to the Ramparts – there's amazing clean-up work going on at the moment along there.
The town is famed for producing artists of all shape and form, from actors to comedians, singers and musicians to painters and designers, and to Francis Beaufort of wind scale fame.
It was famously “only an hour from Dublin” when the furniture trade was at its height, and there’s many a stately home – and ordinary home - has a Navan Carpet. Navan Enterprise Centre grew out of Navan Exhibition Centre, an initiative of the furniture industry to show its wares, along with the Chamber of Commerce of the day.
The town is also the capital of the heritage county of Meath, the centre point of the Boyne Valley and Ireland’s ancient East, and is surrounded by historical locations such as Bective, Tara, Slane, Newgrange, Loughcrew, Kells and Trim.
It is also a living, breathing, town, a home for thousands and the market town for thousands more who work, shop, play, and socialise here. And one of the huge positives that has come out of our feedback and an online survey is the people – the people of Navan are regarded as its greatest asset.
Maybe it’s because there is so much going on in Navan that it is difficult to draw it all together. And that’s what tonight, hopefully, will be about. To draw all that is good about Navan together. In what shape or form, we don’t know yet. That’s why you are all here. To bring your ideas and suggestions about how we can put Navan back on the map. To draw on your skills and talents, your aspirations and vision for the future of Navan.
Because when we all work together, good things happen. Kells is an example of this. There has just been a government allocation - from the Rural Regeneration and Development fund – of €210,000 to develop a cultural quarter for artists and the creative industries.
This project came about as a result of a ‘Kells the Bigger Picture’ seminar where people gave their ideas on what they wanted to be. That initiative developed out of the Local Heroes team in the town.
There are exciting things happening down the line in Navan too. Last November, two Navan projects were included in a major government announcement – the regeneration of Flowerhill, and a Railway Street and County Archive regeneration project.
There is a major regeneration plan, Navan 2030, currently going to tender, which plans to revitalise and rejuvenate the town centre.
Whatever your views on the proposals, they nevertheless represent massive financial commitment to the town of €12 million.
In late January we put out a survey online asking three questions. What do you love about Navan? What is Navan’s best kept secret? What changes would you most like to see in the town?
There were almost 200 responses. They highlighted the friendly people, the fact that it still has a real town centre, family ties, good pubs, restaurants, sporting choices, the rivers and ramparts, the music and arts scene, the theatre, the bull, the fact that it’s a pallindromic town, the Friday market, and the paintings of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the church here beside us!
Ideas put forward included artisan and farmers markets, more community festivals, improving the look of dormant buildings, cleaning up the town more, a proper promotional website for Navan, better use of the rivers for water sports and activities, celebrating our famous personalities more, film festivals, reviving the old drama festival, more facilities for teenager such as skate parks and drop-in centres, re-opening the canal to Drogheda, and making better use of our heritage sites like Athlumney Castle.
There are other things mentioned that would be for greater powers than us, like the rail line, anti-social behaviour, and more jobs.
But an increased pride in our town would have its own influence on these matters – I heard a lady who runs a major multi-national company tell Marian Finucane on the radio one morning that the reason she located the company in Galway was because there was so much going on in the city from a social and cultural point of view – it wasn’t all about business. This morning, proud Navan businessman Noel Moran announced the creation of 50 new jobs in his Prepaid Financial Services.
As we have already highlighted, there is a lot of great work going on in Navan, in all areas, from culture to sport to community activities. With lots of clubs and groups carrying out this work – we are by no means trying to usurp this.
We are simply trying to create a platform or movement that will allow everybody to work together, to work with you all and act as an ‘enabler’ to see the bigger picture – that was the title of the conference in Kells that kick started their cultural initiative and funding – Kells – the bigger picture’. That’s what we need to be looking at in Navan – the bigger picture - rather than going off in different directions to the same destination. We need to create a vision for what we see as the future of our county town, and work towards that vision together.
Other towns have done it – why not Navan? Wexford is famous for its opera, Kinsale for its food, Galway for so much. We should mention tonight, as it celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, the Navan Choral Festival, a very understated event which brings hundreds to the town every year, and wish them well in their anniversary year.
There are a few people who passed away in recent years that we should remember – Paddy Pryle, Jean Fagan, Shane Donnelly, Joe Reilly, people who had a passion for the town.
In the run-up to this meeting, we purposely didn’t say who was involved in this initiative, because it is not about us – it is about Navan. Some of the faces you will know, some are newcomers.
I want to thank you all for coming, for taking time out to either bring your ideas or show your support. We hope that it is the start of something exciting for the town of Navan.
I could refer to a certain American president and say we are going to make Navan great again. I won’t – it is a great place already.
I am going to quote a previous American president, who in turn was quoting an Irish Nobel prize winning writer.
When John F Kennedy was addressing Dail Eireann in 1963, he spoke the words of George Bernard Shaw.
Shaw wrote: “Other people see things and …say ‘Why?’ … But I dream things that never were, and I say ‘why not?’”
Let that be our thinking here tonight.
Workshops
History and heritage – Claire Ryan
Sport and leisure/ recreation - Martin Cassells
Music and entertainments - Declan Smith
Arts and societies - Sharon Maher
Food and drink - Paddy Stapleton
Creative Navan - Kevin Delaney
Youth and drama - Eimear Clowry
Technology and growth - Niall Shanley
General ideas - John Donhoe
A display of old photographs of Navan was provided by Claire Ryan of Navan Historical Society.
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