Airfield is a 38 acre urban working farm located in Dundrum, Dublin that opened as a visitor centre in 2008 for the purpose of recreation and education. In 2011, Airfield closed to the public to facilitate an €11m capital development programme to secure Airfield’s future. This involved developing a new heritage experience; a new farm centre, 3 acre food gardens and new café and retail experience aimed at attracting 200,000 visitors per year. The Board of Airfield engaged our expertise to design, lead and manage the organisational development and strategic re-positioning of Airfield from a much loved local community resource to a national visitor attraction in time for its official opening in April 2014.
What we did
- Organisational Development plan for the recruitment and hiring of a new team of 20 full time staff across the entire visitor experience from farm, gardens, retail, heritage, front of house, education, marketing and communications.
- Development and Training programmes across the areas of project management, customer service, visitor experience, development of organisational KPIs and supported the board expansion programme.
- Innovation Management through a comprehensive training and development programme for the multi-disciplinary team at Airfield to create new ideas, products and services to strengthen the visitor experience and develop new income streams.
- Strategic communications, marketing and social media campaign to re-position Airfield around its renewed purpose and charitable status across the media, government, tourism and education sector. The strategic PR campaign included Minister for Agriculture, Marine and Food officially launching Airfield in April 2014 and achieved national coverage on RTE, the Irish Times, including the front page coverage; Irish Independent and dedicated programmes on Nationwide, The Works, Image Interiors, Countrywide, among other high profile channels.
- Investment and Strategic Partnerships to support Airfield in delivering its mission, develop brand awareness and position Airfield as an important stakeholder in the agri-food sector.
www.airfield.ie
