On 20 November 2025, the Irish SOILCRATES Living Lab convened a Co-creation and Information Session at the Deebert Hotel in Roscrea, County Tipperary, Ireland. This event formed part of the Irish Living Lab’s broader strategy of bottom-up engagement with farmers, community groups, advisors, and stakeholders interested in exploring soil health challenges and developing locally relevant solutions through the SOILCRATES framework.
Held in a hybrid format to allow in-person and remote participation, the session provided an accessible forum for dialogue, knowledge sharing, and collaborative problem-solving. Facilitators from the Irish Living Lab opened the event with an overview of SOILCRATES goals, the Living Lab approach, and the status of the current pilot funding call, emphasising how participatory co-creation can lead to more contextually appropriate and impactful soil health actions.
Participants then engaged in structured co-creation activities aimed at identifying common soil concerns within their regions, sharing experiential knowledge of soil management challenges, and collectively exploring innovative ideas that could form the basis of project proposals. Group work focused on uncovering bottlenecks to soil improvement in local farming systems, opportunities for experimentation, and potential indicators to evaluate success.
The session also provided dedicated time for participants to meet with facilitators and peers to discuss emerging ideas, clarify questions about the funding call, and begin sketching project concepts. These interactions helped transform abstract interests in soil health into more concrete, actionable frameworks that align with SOILCRATES’ participatory methodology.
By fostering deep engagement and collective reflection, the Deebert Hotel session strengthened the Living Lab community in Ireland, supported capacity building among local actors, and reinforced SOILCRATES’ commitment to empowering territorially grounded innovation.
Contact
For press inquiries, contact the communications team : natalia.brack@iid-sii.org and jessica.bailloux@iid-sii.org
