Persuading Ron Swanson: Rethinking Parks
‘I don’t want this parks department to build any parks because I don’t believe in government. I think that all government is a waste of taxpayer money!’
Ron Swanson, Director of the Parks and Recreation Department in Pawnee.
Sometimes it feels as though the greenspace sector has been besieged by an army of Ron Swansons. With the current political climate favouring a shrinking of the state and the consequent retreat of local government, parks have slipped down the priority list. At a time of reducing public sector resources, parks are finding it increasingly difficult securing their share of scarce cash against seemingly more direct and urgent needs such as housing, social care and health. What can we do? Our fictional friend Ron has an answer:
“My dream is to have the parks system privatised and run entirely for profit by corporations.”
However in a market based system, you’d think only those parks that are able to turn over regular profits for shareholders can stay open. Otherwise, we are left reliant on the kind of philanthrophic acts that helped create the first public parks of the Victorian Age. Somehow I doubt that the small local park near my home is a dormant cash cow, primed for integration into the international capitalist system, or on the radar of the Gates Foundation. This is why local authorities became park custodians in the first place. For parks to be parks, they need to be accessible for all to enjoy, regardless of personal income. As such, the answer cannot be as black and white as Ron would have us believe, and so must surely fall somewhere in between the public and private ends of the spectrum. It is the seeking of innovative answers within this space that forms the focus of Nesta’s ‘Rethinking Parks’ programme, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Big Lottery Fund.
Nesta ‘Rethinking Parks’ programme – bringing the public, private and voluntary sectors together
The Nesta ‘Rethinking Parks’ programme is comprised of a cohort of 11 parks that are actively seeking to test new models of park management and maintenance. The initiative is the result of the influential Heritage Lottery Fund ‘State of UK Public Parks’ (2014) report which assessed the current state and future trends in the condition of UK public parks. The report demonstrated how valued parks are for health and wellbeing, economic growth and tourism, and how they support efforts to fight climate change. More specifically, the report highlighted evidence demonstrating their value:
– 2.6 billion visits are made to UK parks per year
– 70% of park managers recorded an increase in visitor numbers to their principal parks over the last year
– £30 million is raised by park friends of groups per year
– 83% of people with children under 5 visit a park at least once a month
– 47% of park friends of groups reported an increase in membership
The report also highlights how the quality and condition of parks will dramatically decline if action is not taken to face the growing risks to parks:
– 86% of park managers have reported cuts to park revenue budgets and expect the trend to continue
– 81% of parks departments have lost skilled management staff since 2010
– 77% of parks departments have lost front line staff since 2010
– 45% of local authorities are considering selling parks and green spaces or transferring the management to others
– 71% of households are concerned that local authority cuts will have an adverse impact on the condition of their local park
The Rethinking Parks programme flows from the recommendations of this report and is about encouraging park innovators to consider new ideas and solutions to evaluate and then to subsequently share their insights so that others can learn from their experiences.
This brings us to the third element of the public-private dichotomy that has not yet been mentioned – arguably the most significant at all – the voluntary sector. Here lies those people that do not work for local government or private companies, yet have an intrinsic interest in parks and green spaces and represent the communities that use and rely on them. They bring a burning passion and belief for public parks to the table that is sometimes unavoidably diluted within the public and private sector in the push for cost-cutting and profit generation. It is this that makes the ‘Rethinking Parks’ programme such a valuable movement for public parks – bringing passionate people from the voluntary sector together with equally dynamic yet often constrained green space professionals from the public and private sectors, to explore new and innovative solutions that help reverse the difficulties affecting UK public parks.
The 11 Rethinking Parks projects share progress at Heeley Park, Sheffield
The ‘Rethinking Parks’ programme is now about halfway through to completion. Last month (April 2015) saw representatives from all 11 projects come together at Heeley Park in Sheffield to review how far they’d come individually and to consider their impact collectively. What came across during this day was just how important passion and drive really is. These are projects being delivered by people who wholeheartedly believe in the significance of parks to our communal well-being and strive to change the seemingly fixed adverse trajectory affecting them. Listening to Andy Jackson of the Heeley Development Trust eloquently tell the story of Heeley Park, the challenges overcome, the difference made and the compelling community-based vision for the future reminded me why I chose to work in the green space sector in the first place. If only there was an Andy Jackson for each of our parks, we wouldn’t have needed the ‘State of UK public parks’ report in the first place. While we often talk about parks in relation to the public, private and voluntary sectors (as I have been doing up to now!), this underplays the importance of individual visionaries like Andy that push the boundaries, make things happen and subsequently transform the sector. Indeed, Lydia Rangoonanan of Nesta recognised this early on in the ‘Rethinking Parks’ programme when she shared some of her first insights: passion is a quality that cannot be learned.
During the course of the day, I heard updates from 11 projects including Eastbrookend Country Park in Barking and Dagenham which I am actively involved in through the Thames Chase Trust. On the surface, the solution for local parks seems simple: increase income and/or reduce costs. Sounds obvious doesn’t it? It is in the specific tailored methods by which income is increased, or costs reduced that innovation will become apparent. On both sides of the revenue/cost equation the public, private and voluntary sectors are demonstrating their ability to play individual, bespoke roles that add up to a more favourable position that can sustain a park.
Here are the 11 projects that are rethinking parks:
Persuading Ron Swanson So, can all this persuade Ron Swanson? We know that the answer to preserving the UK’s public parks lies in the interaction between the public, private and voluntary sectors. It does not lie solely in the hand of private enterprise as Ron would have us believe. There are 11 projects in progress that are testing possible solutions involving all three sectors, trialling innovative methods that could increase income and reduce costs. Is this enough to persuade Ron? If not, then pointing him towards the people driving positive change for public parks – people like Andy – must surely win him over. His enthusiastic deputy Leslie Knope once reflected that “these people are members of the community that care about where they live. So what I hear when I’m being yelled at is people caring loudly at me.” The 11 Rethinking Parks projects are all caring loudly in an effort to make the Rons of this world listen. I am sure that he will. After all, he did say with admiration only thinly veiled by his characteristic deadpan manner that ‘Leslie has a lot of qualities I find horrifying, but the worst one by far is how thoughtful she can be…’ I feel privileged to be part of the Nesta ‘Rethinking Parks’ programme and look forward to seeing these 11 ideas grow and develop during the course of 2015, and then support their dissemination. From what I’ve seen so far, there will be some fantastic lessons to be shared by the programme end in December that will pique even Ron Swanson’s interest.
