Work

Over the past decade, that sense of responsibility has increasingly extended beyond football. Through work on inclusion, migration and sustainability, Bohs has consistently used the club as a platform for wider social and environmental engagement. Climate action became a natural extension of a club already thinking about its role in the life of the city.

At the same time, much of the climate conversation had become increasingly abstract. Full of good intentions, but often disconnected from people’s daily realities. Framed around individual behaviour change, it too often asked people to sacrifice without offering a future they could recognise themselves in.

Bohs wanted to build something real, something owned by the local community, shaped by it, and capable of growing far beyond the club itself. That ambition became the Spark: a long-term project to create Ireland’s first football-anchored climate cooperative.

THINKHOUSE was brought in to help translate that ambition into a clear, compelling and shareable framework, not just for Bohs, but for any community that might want to follow.

The Challenge

Ultimately, the challenge for Bohs was about participation.

How do you make climate action feel inclusive, not moralising? How do you build something that works for people who are already under pressure - financially, socially, emotionally? How do you communicate a cooperative model that is complex and evolving?

How do you create a structure that other clubs and communities could realistically adopt?

The Idea

Instead of creating a campaign, we helped Bohs build a toolkit for a movement.

The aim was not to promote Bohs Spark as a finished product, but to:

• Clarify what it is
• Explain how it works
• Make it feel achievable
• And crucially, make it replicable

This meant shifting the communications mindset from broadcast to recruitment. Bohs Spark wouldn’t succeed by being admired from afar. It would succeed if people could imagine themselves as a part of it.

The Work

The first decision was the format of the toolkit itself. To be genuinely accessible and sustainable, it needed to be simple, flexible and collaborative. We landed on a Google Site as the core platform - easy to build, easy to update, and crucially, easy for the Bohs Spark team to maintain and develop independently. It also allowed both teams to work together in real time, treating the toolkit as a shared, living document rather than a finished deliverable.

From a content perspective, the challenge was clarity without oversimplification. To make it navigable, we structured the site around a series of clear sections: Home, How It Works, Getting Set Up, Working Together and Our Interventions - each designed to meet people at different stages of understanding and involvement.

Every section opens with a short introductory film, designed to orient the viewer and explain how to use the material that follows. These films act less like explainers and more like guides - helping people understand where they are, what they’re looking at, and how it might apply to their own context.

The films were shot on location in and around the Spark offices and Dalymount Park, featuring members of the Bohs Spark team themselves. Rather than actors or external voices, the project is explained by the people doing the work. The films are intercut with B-roll from Spark events, Bohs matches, workshops and the everyday life of the club - grounding the toolkit in lived reality rather than abstract theory.

Visually, the design builds directly from the existing Spark identity. Our role was to extend and systemise that look and feel, creating bespoke illustrations where needed and ensuring consistency across film, text and imagery.

The written content for each section was developed by the Spark team themselves. THINKHOUSE’s role was editorial and structural - helping shape, organise and present that material in a way that made it easier to understand, easier to navigate, and easier to reuse.

The result is not a static toolkit, but a framework: one that explains what the Spark is, how it works, and how others might begin to adapt it.

The Impact (So Far)

The Spark is intentionally long-term. Its success can’t be measured by impressions or short-term metrics. But the Spark has reframed what climate action can look like at the community level: not as sacrifice, but as agency.

Sustainability is often treated as a branding exercise. The Spark treats it as infrastructure. It doesn’t ask people to change their habits in isolation. It welcomes them to change things together.

For THINKHOUSE, this project reflects a belief that communications can do more than sell or signal. At their best, they can help people see themselves as part of something bigger and give them a way in.

Learn more about the Spark here!