Linwood: Park Life

9 Jul 2015

It may be handed out for negative reasons but the experience of one past Carbuncle winner suggests that the award can be a force for good. Here Wendy Grubb, community learning officer with Renfrewshire Council, explains how the 2011 accolade helped save Linwood from becoming a forgotten town by giving the community the leverage it needed to make things happen; including the transformation of a local park.

The story begins many years ago in Linwood when a new mother, Lesley Compston, decided to set up a mother and toddler group. Mothers joined and chatted and gradually the radical idea developed of having safe places for their children to play outside. They developed a three pronged approach; clearing up existing spaces and making them more attractive, running events for children and families to come together and have fun in these spaces and trying to develop a play park.

 As one local resident told me, awe in her voice, these mothers spent years going door to door, raising money and promoting the idea of safe places for children. They went round schools doing consultations with children on what they would like to see.  They were given the use of a bit of land, but unfortunately £10,000 later the ground proved to be contaminated. Finally Sanctuary Housing Association gave them £60,000 to develop a play park by one of their housing developments. Linwood Active was able to secure an additional £150,000 from various small grants. However because Linwood Active did not own the land, it is still owned by Renfrewshire Council (for which Linwood Active are grateful, as it means maintenance and public liability is not a concern), there were various grants and funds they were ineligible for. They could get grants for events but not for equipment. They hit a stalemate with only 6 bits of equipment on site. 

Then Urban Realm made Linwood the 2011 winners of its Carbuncle Award. The subsequent radical transformation of Linwood town centre has been much publicised. Less publicised was the impact on a group of mothers, Linwood Active, with no website or paid staff, trying to build a park. Suddenly the Carbuncle Award led to people coming forward to support their park. Sanctuary housing found more money and paid for an outside gym for the older teenagers, Tesco paid for events, ASDA paid for a death slide and a big basket swing. Renfrewshire Council built a MUGGA (a combined football pitch and basketball court). Local people donated enough money for a set of swings. People from the nearby town of Johnstone began to use the park and so Johnstone Community Council gave a grant for a picnic bench. The park is now labelled a Destination Park, which means it is recognised that people will travel to use it. Because so many people were involved over so long in its development there is a real ownership of the park. It is very visible with houses overlooking it and a busy road next to it meaning any vandals would be quickly spotted. It is a well used park with something for all ages.

The park does not stand alone, Linwood Active and others have also taken an interest in the routes to and from the park and throughout Linwood. In this they have been joined by Active Communities, Paisley based charity, trying to encourage healthy active lifestyles in Renfrewshire. Active Communities received a grant to work in Linwood in 2012 and offered their support to all the existing community groups to tackle local health issues. What this has meant in practice is biking groups for the over 50s, bugging buddies (groups of mothers pushing buggies) and jogging groups are all using the bicycle lanes and pathways through Linwood and its woodlands. Linwood Active and Active Communities have worked together on the Linwood Community Games and the Linwood 5k, which this year was joined by the mucky mile. Together they have been subsequently able to give advice to the Woodland Trust, who own the woods behind the new On-x centre, on how to make their pathways more accessible for mothers with buggies and small children.

Active Communities also run a fitness class for teenagers - Girls on the Run - who meet every Saturday morning in the On-x. These are the girls in pink pictured using the parks gym equipment in the photos.

Linwood has always had a strong community spirit but what the Carbuncle Award did was to help raise the aspirations of local people. It helped a little park to become a really admirable park. Now that the park has finally been finished Linwood Active are looking for a new project. A group of local teenagers are desperately hoping they will turn their attention to the skate park. This used to have a CCTV camera linked to the old sports centre but not to the new one, the On-x, thus allowing vandals to strike unchallenged. A melted wheelie bin stands at the entrance to the park and a lamp has been bent down at right angles next to one of the ramps. The teenagers are now daring to aspire to something better, a skate park that they can skate on.

I asked Lesley from Linwood Active and Susan from Active Communities what advice they would give readers of Urban Realm who were interested in encouraging community involvement in urban regeneration. They both agreed that the starting point is to be honest and up front about your project and your aims. Both also recommended a period of research, finding out what is going on in an area and doing a wide consultation with people from different groups, different areas, employed and unemployed, young and old. The first people to come through your doors offering to speak on behalf of the community are not necessarily the ones you should listen to. This period of research is becoming almost impossible, with money and time a problem and funders expecting immediate results, but it is essential if any sense of ownership is to occur.

Undoubtedly many residents of Linwood were very hurt that the town they cared for was labelled a Carbuncle but it did seem to shame people in power which benefited one little play park.