Fairy Houses

Anyone noticed an increase in Fairy Houses popping up at the base of trees during lockdown? Unless you’ve got small kids, they might have passed you by, but I think they’re an interesting example of people making change to their parks and growing something, which becomes a magnet and destination for others. Places have even built trails around them, downloadable over the internet, without a permission or knowledge of the local council. Even the social commentary of someone who’d made one of a towner blocks with lots of unhappy faces at the windows says something about social justice when 20% of people have no access to a garden.

It’s a similar thing with geocaching. Containers hidden all over the country that only people with an app and a gaggle of kids with too much energy can find. At least the screens about being used outside I suppose. Kids have climbed trees and made dens in woods for generations.

The question for park managers I think is how to encourage or give permission for more people to take ownership of the spaces around them in a way that makes sense to them. Often the ‘ownership’ question or community empowerment is about formal groups taking on management, leases or responsibility for things. This way of organising things is good for those who want to do it, but many other people need more flexible ways, less worthy, less obligation in busy lives. Councils sometimes take down the dens people build because it doesn’t fit into their risk assessments, or take down the rope swings kids have strung up. The benign neglect of lockdown has meant more people are local and can build new things if we give them permission and ‘ownership’.

Blog written by Casey Morrison, 28 Aug 2020