The Push and Pull of People

I used to joke that I don’t like the word volunteering, and I have no idea what community means. But I know who ‘people’ are, they’re all around us. Those involved in volunteering or community projects often know (and maybe love) it, but for many people they’re an irrelevance. Millions of people volunteer in parks, millions also do not. If local authorities want to represent their populations, these things matter. Projects often use euphemisms like volunteers, community, empowerment when they’re really talking about people.

So what do people broadly want?

• Push: The UK population are less trusting of those who govern them, fewer people vote in local elections, and pre-Covid fewer people knew their neighbours.

• Many of the existing service delivery models have failed to satisfy– think welfare, obesity, mental health. Prescribing more antidepressants is not going to help us get healthier or happier.

• Local authorities have very little money for non-statutory services and there is a real need to bring skills, resources and money in. People bring these.

• Pull: People are more educated and capable than ever before, have more time/money and probably more interest in what happens locally.

• Inclusion is more important than ever, with real discrepancies who has access to green space. www.heritagefund.org.uk/blogs/black-and-brown-faces-green-spaces

• There’s proven to be higher satisfaction, and dare I say it, more meaning in building the things we use. Rather than being given a substandard product and being told to be grateful.

We’ll be expanding on all these points during the future parks process as local authorities try different ways of meeting the challenge. Many organisations have tried to do this before in piecemeal, project-funded ways without ever changing how they actually operate. So lets start with the opportunity and properly go for it.

As Homer Simpson once said, (admittedly about beer), people are “the cause of, and solution to all of lives problems”. Let’s let them in.

Blog written by Casey Morrison, 17 Sep 2020