By day bright paint colours, lacy curtains, and colourful window boxes say ‘alive and kicking community’.  

By night steel mesh gutter guards glisten against street lights.  What on earth?  Snow guards? Couldn’t be?  This is Ireland after all - not Scandinavia. Stopping to stare… there’s not a single light on, upstairs or down.  Lace ‘curtains’ tacked on from the inside turn out to be much more subtle architectural botox (as Gillian Darley coined it) than the usual painted plywood or photo realistic screen-print panels of people, plant pots and floral window boxes camouflaging wood rot in the real windows underneath.  

Next morning clear blue skies and glorious sunshine set off lush green wrap-around dress shrouded chimney stacks.   A closer look reveals more than a few slipping slates.  Aha!  So that’s what the mesh guards are for – saving the skulls of the community passing below.

Creative cover-ups like this belie the crumbling truth.  They pull the wool over everyone’s eyes - make it look like everything’s ok.  Well, plainly it isn’t.  

A slipped slate here, a fallen brick there, a bit of plaster here, a rotten window there. Then it all falls down.  Plain clothes vacancy like this is a visible measure of the extent of dead or dying community in this town centre AND it’s there to be seen in 100s and 1000s of others.  

Truth be told we have another pandemic on our hands.  How can we change this?  

I’m reminded of Peter Block’s words… change happens in conversations, room by room.  Extraordinary conversations - not ordinary everyday kind of chit-chat. 

Are you someone who is committed to breathing life into our town centre communities?

1. How much of your time is spent creating and running programmes that aren’t making all that much difference?

2. Are you frustrated or exhausted at slow or no change?

3. How overwhelmed are you at the enormity of this seemingly impossible task?

Are you trained to:

1. Start conversations that create a new future

2. Host extraordinary conversations for change

3. Create and deliver processes that transform what’s now to what can be

If the first set of questions resonate and you’re a ‘No’ to the second then my interactive, participative Stop Killing Town Centre Communities – Start Conversations that Create busk-out is for you.

If you'd like to get some insights into how powerful conversations can help breathe life back into town centre communities and hear more about my forthcoming Conversations that Create Masterclass programme I'd really love to see you at the first of my complimentary three-part series on 28th October at 1.00-1.30pm BST/8.00-8.30am EST.