“Your Park Bristol & Bath, a grassroots nature-based charity, is calling on 20 local businesses to join forces in a fundraising effort to support the two cities’ parks and green spaces.
Last month, the charity released alarming statistics revealing that one-third of the local population faces difficulty in accessing their local park. In response, Your Park Bristol & Bath launched a 12-month campaign, titled “Reimagining Parks,” with the aim of addressing these barriers. The campaign has set an initial fundraising target of £30,000 by October and a larger goal to make a significant impact on the 580 parks and green spaces in Bristol and Bath.
To kickstart their efforts, the charity has launched the “100km Challenge” and is aiming to raise £10,000 with the help of 20 businesses. Each participating business will commit to raising a minimum of £500 by walking or running 100km during the month of September or finding alternative creative ways to cover the distance. This challenge not only supports the charity’s fundraising efforts, but it also encourages employees to spend time outdoors in their local parks and green spaces.
According to Charlee Bennett, the chief executive of Your Park Bristol & Bath, the majority of parks and green spaces in the two cities are not designed inclusively, making it difficult for certain groups to access them. These groups include people with disabilities and their carers, women and girls, minority ethnic groups, and individuals in low-income areas. The charity has identified three key factors that prevent people from confidently utilizing their local parks: physical accessibility, personal safety, and mental wellbeing.
The “Reimagining Parks” campaign has set a goal for every resident of Bristol and Bath to have a park within a ten-minute reach from their home, workplace, or school. This includes making parks physically accessible for people with disabilities and their carers, designing them with the safety and enjoyment of women and girls in mind, and utilizing them to support individuals with mental health issues.
Bennett explains, “Parks are nature-rich, free to use, community assets that are good for everyone’s mental and physical health, but they have historically been designed through a very narrow lens. That means there are literally hundreds of thousands of people in our two cities who feel unable to make the most of their local green spaces.”
In an effort to make parks more accessible, the charity plans to implement simple measures such as creating wheelchair-friendly access, providing accessible toilets, ensuring clear sightlines for safety, and introducing inclusive activities such as sensory walks and wellbeing programs. Unfortunately, these measures are often not feasible with the limited budgets of local authorities.
Bennett states, “Our campaign is not just changing landscapes, it’s fostering inclusivity, safety, and wellbeing. It’s a huge campaign for a small charity like ours to take on, but through our work with local communities over the last five years, we are absolutely clear on what needs to be done, and we are determined to start delivering the changes now.”
The initial plan of the charity is to create one exemplary park in Bristol (Hartcliffe Millennium Green) and one in Bath (Brickfields Park) to showcase what a fully accessible and safe park looks like. They also hope to expand their “Roots to Wellbeing” GP-referral green social prescribing program, which offers weekly sessions in local parks for individuals with mental health issues, to reach 300 more people.
For more information about the “Reimagining Parks” campaign, please visit https://yourpark.org.uk/reimagining-parks.
Distributed by https://pressat.co.uk/”