IT WAS almost five weeks ago that nearly 300 people piled into the Kenmare Bay Hotel to hear about an audacious plan to rescue the pretty Co Kerry town from commercial annihilation.

Former Kerry footballer Mickey Ned O'Sullivan, an avowed "nervous wreck", welcomed the crowd while hotelier John Brennan wondered "if they were going to throw heads of cabbage at us".

Brennan told the audience they planned to build a mighty Guggenheim-style contemporary cultural centre out by the river for €12.5m – and their money was needed.

Tomorrow, the 14-person committee, after three years of low-key planning meetings, will add up the amounts promised so far. It is estimated that pledges totalling more than a million euros, including two separate promises of €250,000 each, have poured in from donors in the locality.

The deposit needed to make the planning application on 1 September is virtually guaranteed. Meanwhile, a request has been lodged with Fáilte Ireland for €6m; 50% of the overall cost. Another €4m is expected to be donated by North American friends of Kenmare. The remaining €1.5m is being reaped from the population of 1,701 (in the 2006 census) by offering every car parking space, window pane and roof slate for sale, literally. The cost of sponsoring a single paving brick, for instance, is €100.

All sponsors, promises television presenter and Park Hotel co-owner Brennan, will enjoy equal board rights in the not-for-profit trust, including buyers of bronze, silver, gold and platinum patronages ranging from €20,000 to €250,000.

The design of the planned building, inspired by an old photograph of six nuns from a nearby convent, has been derided on blogs as "inappropriate". In Kenmare, though, where it will nestle behind a screen of trees by the bridge linking Cork with Kerry, it has won the approval of the majority.

"This is exactly what I love about Kenmare," says Alain Bras, a native of France's Massif Central who runs a wine shop and a mobile wine school in the town. "There's a sense of community behind it all. John convinced us we could not afford to do nothing, the way tourism is moving.

"It's a big ask but the recession is affecting people. When you listen to the news or read it in the papers, people are constantly pointing the finger and blaming people. We believe we cannot sit pretty and wait. We're a little town tucked away. Like any other little town around the country, we'd be doomed if we did nothing because there's no industry."

In Willowfield Garden Centre, Margaret Linnell believes the cultural centre, housing seven galleries, will "steer us away from the hen and the stag parties". She adds: "I ask people coming in here to the garden centre what they think of it and of all these people, only one person did not like it."

Kenmare, boasting two five-star hotels, illustrates the ying and yang of the Celtic Tiger. While it prospered enormously, the scenically-situated town became a developers' paradise, with a six-acre site for a single house selling for €1m before the bubble burst. As house prices fell dramatically at the end of last year, Piercan, a factory supplying surgical gloves to the French nuclear industry, relocated to the Far East, depriving Kenmare of 34 jobs.

"This centre is a concept that is full of imagination. It shouts positivity," says Dingle-based musician and film-maker Philip King, a committee member. "We have to re-imagine Ireland now and we need to have a vision. The centre will be of its own place, something growing out of a county where the people have a stake in it."

Over the mountain in west Cork, another committee is planning the inaugural Fastnet Short Film Festival for May (14 to 17) which is expected to bring between 500 and 1,000 visitors into the area before the summer season.

The festival will be hosted by the fishing village of Schull, undeterred by the absence of a cinema and supported by a galaxy of movie grandees who have homes in the area. Among the patrons are David Puttnam, Jeremy Irons, Sinéad Cusack, former BBC director general Greg Dyke and Steve Coogan – aka Alan Partridge. There will be workshops and prizes for short films and viewings in the ballroom of the Harbour View Hotel and the state-owned Cinemobile.

Whether it is the remoteness of west Cork that makes it self-reliant – or the established influence of continental Europeans who have settled there – the south-west county is home to one of the biggest initiatives taken by recession-hit Ireland. Having lost the Cork-Swansea ferry in 2006, with a shortfall of €35m to €50m in tourism revenue, West Cork Tourism decided to take responsibility for its own future.

Precluded under EU competition law from seeking state funding, the agency set out to raise €3m to purchase a ship and restore the ferry crossing. Throughout the winter, its roadshow pulled into every village and town in west Cork – as well as Killarney and Swansea – seeking pledges of €10,000 each from 300 sponsors.

"This is a story of towns and communities and small villages coming together for their survival," said Paul O'Brien, co-ordinator of the Cork Swansea Ferry Campaign. "We went to the towns and villages with the roadshow and told them the alternative was bleak." Money was needed to buy a ship being auctioned in Finland last Thursday. By then, €2.9m of the required €3m was "as good as in the bag", according to O'Brien.

After acquiring the vessel, the next step for West Cork Tourism is to create a ferry company to operate it. Already the ports of Cork and Swansea have undertaken not to charge operating fees initially.