Communities

The word ‘community’ normally refers to a group of people living in or around a specific place which, in the Future Parks context, is a park or green space. Local authorities’ parks and green space departments often work with residents, community organisations like friends-of groups, volunteers and the social enterprise sector to involve communities in their work.

Many communities are underserved when it comes to accessible green space. Actively engaging and involving communities can encourage increased use of parks and green spaces, create a greater sense of belonging to a local area, and forge connections between people and local places.

It’s important to involve parks’ users in making decisions about them in order to best serve the local community. There’s also a wide range of skills, knowledge, experience and talent that local people can share in order to design and deliver new approaches and enhance the park’s social and natural value. Bringing together public service professionals and citizens enables us to create better long term solutions to build stronger communities that enable healthier and happier lives.

There are a number of different approaches to community involvement in local green spaces that focus on governance, the formal decisions about how a green space works, management, the long term planning with staff teams and resources, and operations, the day to day operation. The latter can include informal help, like litter clean-ups, more formal volunteering like friends-of groups, campaigning to protect or enhance green space and running crowdfunding and fundraising campaigns.

Parks and green spaces are also great locations for hosting activities, whether community-led or delivered in response to what communities want, such as wellbeing walks, buggy clubs and craftathons.

There are social, economic and environmental benefits to involving communities in green spaces, happening in harmony with each other. Having communities involved in the governance, management or operations of their local parks can boost people’s sense of belonging, make them feel safer in their neighbourhood and increase the likelihood of becoming involved elsewhere in the community. Having a place where people can come together nurtures good relationships, skill-sharing and opportunities for learning. It can also benefit people’s health and wellbeing, and reduce loneliness.

Greater community involvement in green spaces increases the care those spaces receive, therefore providing environmental benefits. Similarly, there are economic opportunities that local people can provide or help create, whether that’s through a park cafe, sports offerings or leisure space hire.

Anything you do will work best when it’s grounded in collaboration with communities. Once the purpose has been identified, it may be best to consider a shared approach to, for example, ownership or responsibility of a green space in partnership with a local community group or organisation. In this scenario, it’s useful to establish from the beginning who will do what, and whether or not full or partial responsibility is shared in how the greenspace is governed, managed or operated. It’s important to go into this process with an open mind and a willingness to embrace new ideas – co-design is a good way to do this.

Practical ways that local authorities have supported local community action include networking for friends-of groups, support for those groups to diversify their audiences, leading with a greenspaces strategy, small grants programmes, crowdfunding, volunteering and partnership building.