Postcards from the 'big alley': Sharing the story

A project for Heritage Week 2008.
At the beginning of Heritage Week (August 24 to 31), fifty communities accross Ireland will record the stories of their local 'big alley' on the back of purpose-made postcards depicting their repsective alley. The postcards will be exchanged by post, collected and displayed by each community at the end of Heritage Week.
Sign up your community by contacing irishhandballalley@gmail.com.

Participating communities (via their local handball club or local authority Heritage Officer) will receive 50 postcards of their local handball alley, and a set of pre-printed address labels. Each community is asked to organise a gathering at the beginning of Heritage Week whereby the history of their local 60x30 alley is briefly summarised on the back of each postcard. Using the pre-printed labels, a postcard is sent to each of the other participating communities, to the Heritage Council, the GAA museum and to the event organiser (make use).

During Heritage Week, each participating community will receive postcards from between 20 and 50 other communities across Ireland, depicting their local alley on the front and the respective history on the back. The community is requested to arrange a further gathering at the end of Heritage Week to display the postcards received. This could take place in the local big alley (insurance permitting) or at another venue of the community’s choosing. The display can be as simple as laying out the postcards on a table for people to pick up, turn over and replace, one by one.

The postcard size is larger than standard, at A5 size- thus a larger writing space. Headings such as ‘date of construction’, ‘site benefactor’, ‘construction material/ method’, ‘local handball heroes’, will help to structure information required.

It is planned to provide 50 postcards to each community. However, the final number received will depend on the number of participating communities.
A summary of the costs is shown in the table below. The cost of designing, printing and distributing the postcards will be covered by make use as part of their larger research project. It is intended that the communities only be required to incur the cost of postage stamps and displaying the postcards (approx €30 per alley).