Local charity Your Park Bristol & Bath is marking its fifth anniversary with a 12-month campaign to improve accessibility to green spaces across the region.
Brickfields Park in Twerton is currently undergoing work thanks to the charity | Photo © Your Park Bristol & Bath
The charity wants to reimagine the two cities’ parks and green spaces and tackle the barriers that it believes means around a third of the local population is prevented from being able to access or fully enjoy them.
Your Park Bristol & Bath (YPBB) says the majority of the 580 parks and green spaces across the two cities are not inclusively designed, which significantly impacts access to them, in particular, for disabled people and carers, women and girls, minority ethnic groups, and people in low income areas.
According to the charity, the three key factors preventing people from having the confidence or ability to get out into their local parks are physical accessibility, personal safety and mental wellbeing.
Its Reimagining Parks campaign, which launched on 9th May, aims to start leading the change, and has set itself an ambition for everyone in Bristol and Bath to have a park that is accessible to them within a ten-minute reach of where they live, work or study.
That means making them physically accessible for disabled people and their carers, designed with the safety and enjoyment of women and girls in mind, and used to support people with mental health issues.
The charity is beginning the 12-month campaign with a two-month £30,000 fundraising challenge to enable it to get initial work underway in both cities, but it hopes to attract further funding beyond that to help it deliver all of its targets.
All donations during the two-month period will be doubled by Aviva.
Charlee Bennett, chief executive of YPBB, said: “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 – and millions beyond – who feel unable to make the most of their local green spaces.
“The statistics are horrifying for people who don’t have sufficient access to nature – for example, people growing up with little green space around them are 55% more likely to develop psychiatric disorders in later life, at greater risk of things like depression, anxiety, and obesity, to name just a few things.
“It’s actually not difficult to make parks more accessible – it involves simple measures like making information available better, creating wheelchair-friendly access, having accessible toilets, clear sight lines for safety, introducing inclusive activities such as sensory walks and wellbeing activities.
“Unfortunately, many of these measures are not possible within the shrinking budgets that local authorities, who are responsible for the basic maintenance of parks, have available to them.
“Our Reimagining Parks campaign is not just changing landscapes, it’s fostering inclusivity, safety and wellbeing.
“This is 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 clear on what needs to be done and we are determined to start delivering the changes now.”
For more information about the Reimagining Parks campaign or to donate to the Crowdfunder, visit https://yourpark.org.uk/reimagining-parks.
