Pop goes the park

SMALL PRINT:POP-UP SHOPS and restaurants have become part of Ireland's urban landscape, but now a collective is taking the temporary ethos further by building a pop-up park in Dublin.

The park project, being undertaken by the creative collective UpStart, will be located in an as-yet-unnamed derelict space in the city and will be opened in July. Architects, community-development agencies, designers and artists will become part of a voluntary network to realise the space.

UpStart’s first project was centred around the 2011 general election, when the group erected “election posters” showcasing poetry and visual art. The collective says the park will feature “innovative structural, landscape and multimedia designs . . . creating a platform of excellence for emergent thinking, dialogue and experimentation”. It will last from two to four weeks. Exhibitions, community events and installations will take place in the space, along with a theatre built from wooden pallets by cross-Border youth groups, a garden and “urban orchard”, and an outdoor cinema.

Pop-up parks have been constructed in cities around the world, including a project in Melbourne, an indoor park in Nolita in Manhattan, and in Chicago and London. There’s also the internationally expanding Park(ing) Day in September where architects, designers and landscapers transform urban parking spaces into miniature temporary public parks.

For more information, or to register as an interested group or volunteer, go to upstart.ie.