Introducing George Boyle from the Fumbally Exchange in Dublin with her inspirational story.

“In 2008, Ireland followed the world into recession. Things were quite hairy, particularly for architects. The practice I was with went into liquidation. I’d given birth to my second child just six weeks before. And my husband worked for the same company!”

“It was a perfect storm of a catastrophe. Most of my colleagues left the country to work elsewhere or went back to college to retrain. Anyone who was left in Dublin, including myself, retreated into their bedrooms or home offices to work freelance. All of us were competing for kitchen extensions and other small-scale stuff because there was no market at all for the big projects we had worked on previously. I’d been an employee for years. The company had fed and clothed me and given me a salary. So I had a limited vision of how to earn an income.”

“I tried it for a while but I got lonely. I missed the social aspect of working with other people, and bouncing ideas off them. And I could feel my confidence going. Then the idea of a co-working space started forming in my mind – an engine room for innovation. And, basically, that’s how Fumbally started.”

You can learn more about the social enterprise that George Boyle founded in 2010 at: www.fumballyexchange.com

Useful Links:

Watch the video from our Can Do Places Visit to the Fumbally Exchange  – Can Do Places in Dublin