TWO of the world’s leading sports stadia experts are coming to Belfast today to participate in a Féile an Phobail event – hosted by West Belfast tourism development body Fáilte Feirste Thiar – which will map out the significant opportunities that the new Casement Park stadium can deliver for West Belfast and wider society.

Professor Terry Stephens, the Sports Tourism Advisor to the UN World Tourism Organisation and Julian Jenkins, a stadia development expert who has set the community template for stadia, including Cardiff City and FC Servette, will present their social, economic and cultural vision for the delivery of Casement Park.

The event will see the Welsh-based experts join local sporting stars, residents, business, cultural and civic leaders, including former Tyrone All-Ireland winning captain Peter Canavan and Derry’s current Ulster Football Championship winning captain Chrissy McKaigue in discussion on how Ulster GAA’s new provincial stadium can be a catalyst for sporting, community and economic integration and regeneration. 

Welcoming the event, Harry Connolly, director of Fáilte Feirste Thiar said: “Casement Park is the most significant and important development in West Belfast in a generation, with its far reaching sporting, cultural and economic footprint set to touch many aspects of peoples’ lives.  

"After many years of waiting, the project is now tangible and through this event we want to leverage Terry and Julian’s global insights helping to translate them to local actions that can help to fully realise the enormous potential of this transformational project.”

Commenting Professor Terry Stephens said that stadia are fundamentally important facilities within their communities.

"With good design and careful, thoughtful, planning and programming they can become the icons of a community," he said.

"At a time when hybridity is driving our response to meeting the challenges of delivering successful public facilities and services, Casement can become a leader in the way we re-imagine and reshape the relationship between sport, people and place.”

Julian Jenkins added that any new stadium’s goal must be to design and deliver a hub providing geographic accessibility and affordability for the community.

"It must be the heartbeat of the community, the true essence and DNA of the ground it stands in. A well-designed stadium like Casement Park will bring people together through the power of sport and with its core principle of providing services and facilities over and above that of a sporting nature in can truly create social value for the whole community.”

Ulster GAA Project Sponsor, Stephen McGeehan detailed how as they move towards the delivery phases of the project, they will be implementing their extensive and far-reaching community engagement and benefits programme and how this event is the first step in that process.

"Throughout the programme we will work in partnership with Gaels, residents, businesses and cultural organisations to plot out the role that the stadium will play as an integral part of the community," he said.  

"It is for these reasons that the input of Professor Terry Stevens and Julian Jenkins is so timely and valuable and I look forward to hearing their insights into the opportunities that the construction and delivery phase of the project can provide.”

The event titled ‘Realising the Vision and Delivering the Dream’ takes place on Wednesday 10th August at 12:30 pm in the Wolf and Whistle bar in Andersonstown.