Community-21 – a series of conversations reflecting on community work over Covid-19, funded by the Community Relations Council‘s Media Grant Scheme.
Every neighbourhood needs community. That’s exactly why the Richmount Rural Community Association was formed in 2006. It was rightly anticipated that Richmount, as a virtual new village / housing development established in the Parish of Drumcree, without a pre-embedded population or culture, would need the steering of good-hearted people as the community began to take shape. Joe Garvey, Chairman of the RRCA, and his volunteers have been the arbiters of this process and now have one of the most active community associations in the Armagh, Banbridge & Craigavon Council Area.
From building good relations across the two traditional communities to helping integrate a range of European migrant populations, Joe and his colleagues have brought these many communities together on a range of shared heritage and arts projects showcasing an intricate and oft overlooked local history in which many locals have begun to take great pride in. They’ve brought people together, young and old, working with local schools and understanding early that creating a place where the community can come together inter-generationally to learn from one another would be key to successfully developing good relations.
The RRCA operates under the motto, “Working Together for all in the Community” and they know doubt clung to that notion during the pandemic.
While they joined many other groups explored in this series assembling and disseminating food parcels, they also got to work creating in total 10,000 pieces of PPE for local hospitals and care homes over the pandemic. They hosted community group meetings over Zoom and published more copies of their highly popular local newsletter, the Richmount News, prioritising those with less access to the internet to feel more connected to what was going on locally. They hosted virtual Garden Parties and delivered a virtual two-course Christmas Dinner to members of the local community in need. They knew full rightly that making a connection – any connection, even just for the sake of banter – would help lift the spirits of locals in what was, to put it bluntly, a doom and gloom time for the community.
They are now slowly getting back to normal, and their many community groups are starting to meet again (socially distanced of course). They’ve hosted Murder Mystery nights which have been all the rave and are continuing their National Lottery Heritage Funded “Ballintaggart Giants Project“, which continues on a multi-year programme focused on bringing to life local history dating back 5000 years, diving deep into local agricultural practices of the 20th century.
Richmount is the model for what every new estate in Northern Ireland should aspire to, and its Rural Community Association is exactly what community should be.