09liveproject7 Re:thinking Endcliffe Park & the Porter Valley

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…………04.11.07

playing with play-dough

The children’s workshop went down a storm. Loads of interesting ideas were generated by modelling with play-dough. So a big thank you goes out to all the children who helped out!

24SUCCESS……

Endcliffe Park’s 24 hour event, held this weekend was a great success. The event was primarily held to see if the useage of the park could be extended by holding events at different times over a 24 hour period. Particular attention was given to the late evening period so that the park became an activity hub for youths in the area and making the park more attractive at night for all to use.  Along with a Joggers pit-stop, a playground activity workshop and a proposal exhibition out side the cafe, there was also a live jazz band and late night football using mobile floodlights. The events attracted lots of attention which helped us enormously with our other aim for the event; to get users feedback on our proposals and record more of their ideas. Lots of useful feedback was recieved for us to process and will form the basis of our final masterplan proposal.

24ENDCLIFFE…..

Here are a few examples of some potential interventions within Endcliffe Park. To note a few: a new entrance, boulders for climbing, tree walk and a cinema event. Have your say on what you think should be left, removed or added in the park to improve it.

24 ENDCLIFFE

Come along to any of the events to have your say whilst enjoying what the park has to offer!

enchanting entrance

The entrance needs to highlight the importance of the park. Just subtle additions in the form of steel rods can make a huge difference. Just an initial step to show what can be achieved . . . .

walking through the woods……..

Part of the Endcliffe 24 event will be to gauge public opinion on a number of ideas and designs for the park. These will be our ideas in response to our user consultation so far. They will be represented graphically to allow people to comment,  reject or improve our ideas. The attached example is an image of a proposed treewalk. The walk would create an attraction in Endcliffe woods allowing exploration of of the woodland at all levels.  At its summit users would get a view of the whole of the Porter Valley and out to the Peak district, showing the parks wider context. Successful examples of similar projects can be seen around the country. For example Salcey Forest in Northamptonshire.

Serendipity Shelter

After Saturday’s intervention of having wrapped the pergola we decided to leave it up for a 48 hour period and to periodically return documenting any changes or uses it might encourage. It was a decision that led to a crucial discovery.Since having starting the Re:Thinking Endcliffe Park Project one issue has repeatedly cropped up, that being the Police’s request for a ‘Youth Shelter’ in the park.

We have questioned the idea of having a specific shelter for ’youths’ mainly because there is no accurate understanding of what is wanted in the form of such a shelter by whom it is being asked to be provided for, and in any definate terms, the very nature of shelters are to sit out of the direct affects of weather and climate but are often very inactive places, ensuing acts of boredom. Our thoughts are to encourage activity, movement and participation in the community as supposed to separation.

With this in mind we have seen least of on our numerous days spent in the park are ‘youths’ or young adults. There has been the odd one or two just walking through, however we have been unable to speak to in great detail regarding ideas of having a defined place in the park for them and they have been reluctant to speak to us.

This is where the wrapped pergola comes back into the story.

After Saturdays very successful consultation we returned to see what was happening at the pergola.

As we approached we could see that a few of the sheets of fabric had been unfastened at the bottom and where gently blowing in the breeze. As we got closer we caught a glimpse of some activity in the pergola. There appeared to be some bikes standing up against a wall and also sitting around and within the pergola were a number of teenagers.

It appears at some point after we left on Saturday afternoon the teenagers had begun to use/appropriate the pergola as their own and alter it to suit their use including the addition of numberous doors to ride ther bikes through by unfastening the material where it had been fixed at the base. The Fabric was now free to blow in the wind but more importantly allowed movement through the pergola from almost any direction. The loose fabric also created the ability to have privacy and protection from the wider outside world, something that they couldn’t have when there was no cover in the park. One teenager was sitting quietly on one of the benches inside the pergola enjoying a snack while others were chatting and cycling around it.

By making it possible for these young people to use this space they inadvertently have shown that if they had a shelter of some form that it would be used, but also if the shelter was multipurpose then activity and protection from the elements could be combined to create a space that would be popular with this sometimes overlooked, but important part of our community.

Playgrounds….

The term playground generally indicates the areas that are set aside in gardens and urban parks for children to play in: delimited, controlled spaces that are protected from the intrusion of the adult world by a high rail fence, often they contain nothing more than a few pieces that have been ordered from a catalog with the certainty that, just like the furnishings of a house must inevitably include tables chairs, couches, armchairs, etc., a play area necessarily has to have slides, swings, rocking horses, and the like.

The desolation of these playgrounds is the mirror image of a society which leaves very little space to playing, unless it is behind a fence, beyond the box office of a theme park, imprisoned and neutralized within the confines of “free time”.

[Alberto Lacovoni, GameZONE, Playgrounds between ritual scenarios and reality, ISBN 3-7643-0151-1]

Similarly

The term park generally indicates a publicly owned area of land, usually with grass, trees, paths, sports fields, playgrounds, picnic areas, and other features for recreation and relaxation. These areas are set aside in cities and urban centres for people to play: delimited, controlled spaces that are protected from the intrusion of the surrounding urban, unnatural manmade world.

Park – A publicly owned area of land, usually with grass, trees, paths, sports fields, playgrounds, picnic areas, and other features for recreation and relaxation

Prison – A place or condition of captivity or unwanted restraint

[Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation]