Twenty years of KCA: Noel Clare

Noel Clare making a presentation to Kieran Forde in 2018 to mark his retirement from 31 years of involvement in Kilcullen Tidy Towns and KCA.

Kilcullen Community Action was founded 21 years ago, on 9 May 2001. The Diary asked a number of people who have been involved with it during the last 20 years to give us some of their thoughts on the organisation. We will be publishing these as they come in, to mark the completion of two decades of KCA work.

I have been involved with KCA since the beginning and was also involved with Tidy Towns before that back to the early 90s, writes Noel Clare. Tidy Towns was a project within what was then Kilcullen Community Development and it kept going when KCD ceased to exist. The name change came because some people felt that Tidy Towns held too narrow a perception in people’s minds and as Kilcullen was about to undergo unprecedented development, a name change would help to achieve a broader focus, including an input into planning and development that was happening at the time. 

The input of KCA into planning and development since then is on record and I for one am still proud to have been involved in fighting to preserve something of the unique characteristics of Kilcullen town centre, something KCA is still helping to recognise, preserve and enhance through current projects — including the Market Square Public Realm Enhancement scheme and Kilcullen Design Statement. 

As you pass through Kilcullen you can’t but notice improvements that have been brought about by KCA, particularly to the landscape and environment of the town. From the Dun Ailinne Interpretive Park, to the Valley Riverside Park and Fairy Trail, the Library Garden, the Convent Garden, and the obvious improvements on all approach roads — the most recent being the addition of new town name signs. Things like Christmas Lights and Summer Flowers — both very substantial projects in their own right — are almost taken for granted and both add enormously to the feel-good factor around the town.

KCA has also provided a platform to give voice to the community on many issues over the years, hosting public meetings on several occasions.

But perhaps the most important aspect of KCA is that from day one it has been an open, transparent and welcoming organisation. One of its successes is that it has attracted many new members of the community to become involved. It has also developed into an organisation with really good and strong governance including being registered as a Company Limited by Guarantee with the CRO and as a Charity with the Charities Regulator. All of these bode well for the future of the organisation. 

KCA has also established good relationships with local and outside organisations and this has given added strength to our aim to bring about improvements locally. One sign of this is the fact that Kilcullen has been one of the most successful towns in the county in drawing down funds from Leader. 

Looking forward, KCA has a very robust structure, the result of a lot of hard work by many people over the years and this means that it can look forward with confidence to the future. Tidy Towns still resides at the core, as it did 20 years ago. But Tidy Towns is probably the most successful national grassroots organisation in the entire country (alongside the GAA), and has positioned itself to become a strong force for environmental awareness and improvement — something that is now hugely more important than it was 20 years ago. One current project that is particularly important in this regard is that of Kilcullen’s Sustainable Energy Group and it is important that this gets off the ground in the near future.

Finally it has been wonderful to work with and get to know a tremendous group of people, all of whom have a one common aim — to make Kilcullen a better place.

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