Community Profile

Every issue of our email newsletter Community Bench includes an interview with a community group working with green space.

If you are would like your group to feature as the Community Profile, or would like to contact any of the featured groups, please email community@green-space.org.uk.

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August 2010

Friends of Cross Flatts Park
Alison Garthwaite, Secretary

What inspired you to get involved with the Friends of Cross Flatts Park?
Having lived next to Cross Flatts Park since 1983, and at first enjoyed its amenities, by 2000 I had seen it deteriorate into a dumping ground. Vandalism was rife, motorbikes sped from side to side and rubbish was cleaned up haphazardly and irregularly. Many local people saw it as a no-go area. Improvements were made by the local authority without local consultation and were often inappropriate. I love fresh air and green space, and wanted the park to be a good environment for everyone to enjoy. When I heard that a Friends group had formed, I was keen to join.

What does being part of the group involve?
Our aim is to make the park a safe and attractive place for everyone in the community to enjoy. This happened in several stages:

• At first, our energies focused on clean-ups: removing the worst of the rubbish in working groups, undertaking a dog-dirt awareness campaign by leafleting dog walkers and giving them dog dirt bags whilst raising a small amount from local councillors to pay for some dog-dirt and litter bins. We also worked with Groundwork and Leeds Cares to organise a big clearance day, where some breeze-block walls and other major eyesores were knocked down, as well as some fence painting and planting. The final act in this first stage was to ask local people living on the perimeter of the park if they would like a fence putting up around it, with small access points. They agreed, so this was completed.
  
• Once the park was cleaner and more secure, we started to put on activities and work in partnership with Leeds City Council Parks and Countryside Department to encourage more people to use it. They include: Organising bands to play in the park on summer Sundays, now in its 11th year.
  
• An annual dog show.
  
• A competitive craft and produce show in a marquee during the annual Beeston Festival in the park.
  
• Producing 2000 calendars using photographs of the park.
  Running a membership scheme, organising general meetings and an AGM with speakers, and holding committee meetings.
  
• Working with Leeds City Council on fundraising bids and advising on new play equipment and the layout of a multi-activity games area, which is very well used, and resists vandalism.
  
• Buying and advising on the siting of more, vandal-proof benches, paving and ramps.
  
• Planting bulbs every autumn and advising on tree planting.
  
• Holding a goal-setting event. Top of the list was the creation of a performance area for the bands and other events, and an exercise trail.

What do you feel has been your greatest success as a group?
Our greatest success has been creating a much safer and more attractive space enjoyed by all members of the community, with entertainments and events for all, and involving local people in making decisions about the park.

What have been the main challenges?

• Eradicating vandalism.
• Constant need to remind dog owners of their responsibility to clear up after their dogs.
• Developing good partnership working with Leeds City Council.
• Overcoming fear, negativity and cynicism about the possibilities for change, on the part of some members of the community.
• Increasing the numbers of people willing to volunteer.
• Making the hostile and to-some-people-alarming gangs of male youth and motor cyclists unwelcome.

If you were to offer a new community group advice, what would that be?
Start slowly, establish yourselves with all sections of the local community and gain support by making regular, small and visible improvements. Fundraising secretly and then putting in some big facility all at once won't achieve good results unless the park has become safer, cleaner and better used already. Ensure that maintenance is an integral part of any installation of equipment, and establish whose responsibility this is. Ensure that equipment is vandal-proof (as far as this is possible).

Work hard at establishing and maintaining good partnerships with the local authority from the outset. Ensure that committee members are also hands-on volunteers, and strive for diversity within the committee. When putting on events, go for both accessibility and quality. People will not return if an event is badly organised. Consult and involve local people, but go further than just asking, "What would you like to see?" Identify a range of attainable things that you would like to see, and ask them for their views on these, and then to suggest others. Research what other parks and Friends of groups do, and learn from their good practice and their mistakes.

What does the future have in store for the Friends of Cross Flatts Park? First and foremost, working with Tiger11 and developing the Pavilion into a larger space for hire, with an integral performance space and a community café. Also we want to raise funds for more exercise equipment and improve signage, especially for disabled visitors.