Get active and interactive at St Columb's Park

Its ethos and location also enhance its attractiveness as a neutral space in an urban setting, while the landscaped grounds cannot be overstated as a breathing space.

As a community facility, St Columb's Park House occupies a fairly unique position in the City in that it is a truly neutral environment for learning and play for user groups of all ages.

According to Brian Dougherty, Director at the Centre, a major research project in 2005 into Protestant alienation revealed Londonderry was "quite divided" with very few facilities anywhere that were seen as completely inclusive of all user groups, but St Columb's Park House was one of a small number of the unique spaces in the cityscape that did offer such a breathing space.

"We have managed to maintain St Columb's Park House as a neutral space. We have 10 programmes running at the moment around peace building and citizenship and they involve people from right across the City from all age groups and backgrounds, religious backgrounds and minority groups as well," he said.

"This is because we are almost in the city centre, but if you look at our grounds it is almost as if we are in a rural setting, which makes us handy but also a pleasant facility because of its surroundings. There is an aesthetic quality to it, making it quiet, while the house itself is quite a nice place for people to come to. So we are quite lucky in that respect.

"Also, with the completion of the Peace Bridge it will mean we are completely accessible to both sides of the City. The importance of that bridge is immense in terms of widening the reach of St Columb's Park House. We have secured funding from the DSD modernisation fund and the International Fund for Ireland to renovate and extend the house here. We are keen to keep aesthetic quality of the House in terms of its facade, but we want to modernise it to turn it into a conference facility that meets all modern requirements.

"As part of that we putting in additional bed space. Our accommodation here is very popular, particularly among international visitors as well as visitors from Northern ireland, but we are a bit frustrated at times that the house itself is not as well known in the City as it should be," he said.

Among the groups Mr Dougherty said staff would like to see making greater use of the House and Park are youth groups and organisations which cannot afford to avail of hotel accommodation because the cost would be prohibitive.

Ideal

"We have very competitive rates and would be cheaper than a hotel and the nature of our location means that the groups that come here would have free reign in terms of access to the house and the surrounding gardens and grounds and play park and they are in close proximity of the City. So it is ideal," he said.

Groups welcome to contact St Columb's Park House are the private sector, business sector, voluntary sector and community sector.

"With the renovation, now we will have all the modern technology that is required, the community cafeteria will be open to the public as well as the user groups and the house. There is a market within the City, but at the moment we tend to get groups mostly from outside the City coming to us. That said, the conference facilities are very well supported by organisations within the City, but most of the residential use is from Europe, America and Belfast, which you can understand. But we still think there is a market locally that we can tap into."

St Columb's Park House has been offering residential, reconciliation and recreation facilities since 1994, and with the development of the Ebrington Barracks site and the ongoing peace-building work being undertaken in Londonderry, the future is looking very bright.

"Even the numbers of people simply walking through the Park has increased tremendously since work began on the former Barracks, and we like to think that we are proactive in the work that we do," said Mr Dougherty.

Indeed, in the past year alone, the staff have run a programme for political youth groups looking at human rights, racism and sectarianism; the Foyle YouthBank Programme has seen 3,500 in small grants being given to youth-led initiatives; an ASB Programme is operating in The Fountain, Newbuildings, Sion Mills and Pennyburn, which explores the relationship between sectarianism and anti-social behaviour and involves 48 young people.

There is also the flagship Play for Change Project which involves a variety of agencies and the City Council, which has led to the ongoing development in the grounds of an adventure play space for the under eights and a separate space for those over the age of eight.

Workshops have been ongoing on a range of topics, not least those involving the sustainability of the facility. However, they are not all steered towards weighty discussion, as creativity and encouraging thinking outside the box to problem solve are also important, and such principles are employed in the Street Theatre programme which ran during Community Relations Week.

To find out more about the Centre and its outdoor facilities log on at www.stcolumbsparkhouse.org/ or telephone 028 7134 3080.