Meeting House Lane being transformed into 'Instagramable space'
After the success of the Niall Horan Mural, Mullingar Chamber have moved on to their next project – ‘Umbrella Lane’. Meeting House Lane is being transformed in a beautiful Instagramable space.
The umbrellas were installed yesterday, Monday July 18, by Donohoe Engineering, and the Mullingar Chamber Retail team are working on enhancing the features in the coming week.
Mullingar Chamber established a specialised retail team in mid-2021 to manage and co-ordinate the integration of Mullingar Chamber with the retailers of the town and to create consistent branding around the town and the leisure and hospitality and retail businesses.
The team are David Quirke of Wholesome Kitchen and Aisling Coleman, Mullingar Chamber of Commerce.
Their objective team is to increase footfall in Mullingar by creating awareness and ensuring a consistent brand for Mullingar as a town.
Mullingar Chamber received a grant from Westmeath County Council (Economic Development, Enterprise and Tourism SPC) and commenced discussions with branding agencies to deliver on their objectives.
The creative process with Studio Great let to them choosing the #LoveMullingar campaign and an M with a love heart in purple and yellow as the logo. The umbrellas represent the colours of the logo.
Ms Coleman said that strong branding increases the value of a location, provides direction and motivation, and will add to making Mullingar a quality destination in the Midlands and throughout Ireland.
“The branding represents people’s perception of Mullingar, its retail and hospitality services, its reputation and how we advertise and market the town.
“The popularity of social networks, especially the visually focused Instagram platform, has created a need for Instagrammable spaces to attract visitors and entice them to spend time and money in the town as part of a wider tourism and consumer experience.
“These selfie-worthy spaces inspire visitors to share photos and videos of their experiences, creating invaluable word-of-mouth marketing of Mullingar and also fit in with some established instagramable images of the town, including Joe Dolan statue at Market Square and the Niall Horan Mural on Dominick’s Street.”
As part of this process, Mullingar Chamber sought to identify areas of the town that would work well with the plan, and one area they felt would work best for this was Meeting House Lane.
The umbrellas will be a permanent feature but can be taken down for a period when construction for redevelopment begins on the lane.
Mullingar Chamber encourage local (and other) people to get out there and increase visuals of Mullingar on social media under the #LoveMullingar hashtag.
Mullingar Chamber believe their project will have positive knock-on effects for the town and the leisure, hospitality and retail businesses and assist in boosting in economic activity in these sectors as we recover from the pandemic in 2022 and beyond.