Claire Flannery
We interviewed Claire Flannery, TU Dublin Student Volunteering Co-ordinator, on her experience working with STAND to bring the Student Festival to the campus and on her role supporting students who want to make a positive change.
“The exhibition animates the campus in a meaningful way.”: STAND x TU Dublin
At TU Dublin, active citizenship is more than a side activity: it’s woven into the very fabric of campus life. And for Claire Flannery, Student Volunteering Coordinator, partnering with STAND has become a key part of that mission.
“TU Dublin's three strategic pillars are ‘People, Planet, Partnerships’ and our work with STAND helps us to action all three.”
She first connected with STAND in 2021/2022 academic year and played a key role in bringing the STAND Student Festival to TU Dublin for the first time. Since then, the STAND Festival has turned into an annual occurrence on campus, and it has been hosted in high footfall areas like the Grangegorman campus and more recently in Blanchardstown too, bringing critical global justice conversations to students’ daily environment.
“STAND opens our students' eyes to their similarities with students and activists outside of TU Dublin and Ireland. The exhibition animates the campus in a meaningful way.”
The collaboration has helped students go beyond learning about global issues: they’ve stepped into leadership roles to promote and deliver the STAND Festival on campus. “The opportunity of the Festival Coordinator role brought students who didn't know each other previously together to achieve a common goal and gave them the tools to run their own events, which was a great learning experience.”
The partnership between STAND and TU Dublin had been supporting key institutional goals on campus, specially around sustainability, civic engagement, and global learning.
“The content of the exhibitions has consistently helped with the promotion of student leadership and student-led initiatives, which is very high on the agenda at TU Dublin.”
Overall, Claire noted that the relationship with the STAND team itself has been just as valuable and sees even more potential in the years ahead. As a matter of fact, when asked about how collaborating with STAND was, she mentioned: “All STAND team members we have worked with have great energy, ideas and are natural collaborators."
When asked if she would recommend a collaboration with STAND for other institutions, she simply said: “Our partnership with STAND is one that we are proud of and that puts us on level footing with the many other HEIs in Ireland that also partner with STAND. The STAND Festival at TU Dublin is an important aspect of our annual Student Volunteering programme and we hope to develop our partnership and work with the team at STAND in more in-depth ways in the future.”
Interested in partnering with STAND to bring Global Citizenship Education to your students? Visit out Get Involved page to get in touch or read about more changemakers stories on our Stories of Impact page.
