The Future LOOP: CRNI member conference 2024

Sincere thanks to everyone who attended this year’s CRNI member conference, Future Loop for Circular Communities. The conference was a uniquely valuable opportunity to hear from a range of voices involved in reuse, repair and recycling activities in our communities. 

We created Future Loop to represent a vision of a circular Ireland—one that CRNI’s members are striving to build. The conference was both a way to imagine this future and a guide for the steps we need to take as a sector and society to make it a reality. Our goal for the day was to gather ideas from everyone to shape a strong, inspiring vision of inclusive, resilient, and sustainable circular communities that we, as a society, aim to achieve. From this vision, we also wanted to outline the path that community-based social enterprises should follow to reach that goal.

The entire day was shaped around this ambition: we created an environment where members could put aside their day to day challenges and engage in collective aspirational thinking and discussion. In the morning we held two community conversations to kickstart this aspirational thinking. We heard from CRNI members and people supporting reuse, repair and recycling activities. They were invited to discuss how our future could be informed by circularity practices of the past, and how the community-based sector can be enabled to grow sustainably while responding to challenges and opportunties. We were delighted to be joined by guest speakers including: Mark Sweeney (Oxfam Ireland, Charity Retail Ireland), Niamh O’Carroll (O’Carroll Consulting), Caroline McGuinness-Brooks (NIRN), Steve Flint (Deaf Enterprises), Cathy Coote (An Mheitheal Rothar), Mary Fleming (Change Clothes), and Clodagh O’Reilly (Social Enterprise Solutions and TUD). 

Following these community conversations we engaged attendees with two energising and active breakout sessions led by John Fitzsimons (Fifth Story) and recorded by graphic recorder Leah O’Donoghue (Leah Design). These sessions prompted attendees to build on and share their aspirational ideas from the morning, to be captured – with John and Leah’s help – to build a visual record of the Future Loop vision.

Many of the themes that emerged throughout the day helped to reaffirm the direction we’re already taking in our work as a sector, and we also saw newer ideas emerge and cluster into collective ambitions as members shared their individual aspirations. 

We are so excited to share the resulting Future Loop vision that was was cultivated by our members throughout the day! Through this collective thinking we were able to identify and illustrate the following prominent themes: 

• Increasing skills provision and formalised training
• The need for widespread change of mindsets, particularly with regard to our relationship with land and resources
• The government’s role in creating a regulatory and fiscal environment that enhances social enterprise and community-based circular activities
• The importance of secure long-term structural supports such as premises for community-based reuse and repair activities, and making these as easily accessible to the public as traditional retail zones
• Increasing awareness and understanding of reuse and repair concepts through formal and informal education

There was a resounding sense of community, social value and collaboration in people’s aspirations for the Future Loop. We saw a strong desire for knowledge and skills to be freely shared around reuse and repair practices, and for making and repairing to be a joyful pursuit for all. Attendees were also prompted to re-imagine the high street where derelict shopfronts and endless vape shops are replaced by repair cafés and libraries of things, and where ‘consumers’ become ‘community’. In this Future Loop society we see a move away from fast decisions towards slow deliberate choices.

We hope you’re as excited by this vision as we are and we look forward to sharing this Future Loop vision in more meaningful ways with our community! We’re hugely grateful to the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications and Community Foundation Ireland whose financial support made the conference possible. 

• October 31, 2024