In October 2018, Tony met with the Friends of Brackenhill Park group to discuss the work Your Back Yard did with Wibsey Park in 2017/18, with the view of running similar events in Brackenhill Park next summer. FOBP agreed to show Tony around the park, and he made a few observations:
- The park has a lot of potential but needs investment in order to attract more users
- The play area need to be refurbished and updated
- There is little provision in the park for older children
- A measured mile would be a cost-effective way of attracting more users
- Brackenhill Primary School should be focused on as a key user of the park
The project proposal comprised of two stages:
Phase 1: A survey of park users within a 10 minute walking distance of the park will be undertaken so that we can find out what people like and dislike about the park, what their suggestions are for improving the park, and whether or not people are interested in getting involved in supporting the park through, for example, joining the FOBP group. We will put the survey online, and hope to receive 150 completed surveys in total. We also aim to conduct 10 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in the park, such as council officers, the Bowling Club, and Brackenhill Primary School.
Phase 2: Running a programme of healthy-living activities in Brackenhill Park in the summer of 2019. We will also write a feedback report that can be used to form the basis of future funding applications. For example, it could be used to fund a new play area or skate park in Brackenhill Park.
June 2019 Update:
We have now undertaken the research with park users. In total, we had 89 responses to the online park user survey and over 150 responses to the survey we gave to the schoolchildren from Brackenhill Primary School and Hollingwood Primary School. We also conducted semi-structured interviews with Cllr Joanne Dodds (Chair of Friends of Brackenhill Park), three local Council Wardens, one officer from the Parks and Landscapes department at BMDC, and members of the School Councils of Brackenhill Primary School and Hollingwood Primary School. Stay tuned for the final results of this research.
At the end of May 2019, we found out that we had been successful in a funding bid to pay for a programme of healthy-living activities for over 50s across Leeds. We are planning on using some of this funding to run some events for over 50s in Brackenhill Park over the summer of 2019. We are also currently looking at other funding options to pay for sessions for people of all ages to take place in the Park.