Cath Mortimer joined us for the ‘Look at your City: Gathering Playfully’ walk and helped us look hard at some of the really practical issues facing public spaces.
Where is the park? Sometimes children and families only see the swings areas as the park, whereas good to see play as happening everywhere.
Events: Make it York hold the bookings and liabilities. But they tell the Friends what is going on and the Friends communicate events to members.
Gardening: Friends are involvement in doing the borders as agreed through Growing Green space, the council does mowing.
Geese: Geese like to land on water. They like grass. And they like people feed them.
Friends of Rowntree park have put in more railing around one of the old bowling parks to keep the geese out and make a safe space for children
Seating: Benches and other seating is very important. They need to be robust and include seating designed for wheelchair users.
Amphitheatre area: There are places for electricity costs for electrician to come and turn them on ad turn them off, which makes its use expensive. There also isn’t any shelter or shade which makes it difficult.
The Café supports activity: People use the reading café for group, French and Spanish. Craft activities like Yarn bombing.