Wowza. 5 months of this.
I've been busy! See my other posts in this series for background. TL;DR I'm trying to build more greenspace in my city. You can also now see our shiny little website linked to this post.
We had a lot of scattered momentum in the past few months. Some folks were really into the idea of working with the local cemetery, though some of those same folks left the city and their momentum went with them a bit. Some folks joined up who had great skills and input, though. That said, it's been a lot of... me, plodding along, trying to herd cats together. There have been moments where I've wanted to throw in the towel. It's been hard!
But I've kept going out of sheer stubbornness. I helped out in a community garden over the summer, one attached to an arts charity. I was recommended to reach out to the Arts charity for some collaboration, not knowing much about their garden, and now I have the keys to it somehow. I go there about once a week to make sure things are tidy and water. But again, mostly just been me and a few dedicated folks who will pop in now and again.
I also run a local LGBT group (inherited, I didn't create it). So, my group is doing a collaboration with that LGBT group to have a queer-friendly garden party in the community garden. It's the kind of thing I want to build, a space (both physical and metaphorical) where people across generations, across lines of queer/cishet, and across cultural boundaries can gather and share joy. It happens late September, and I hope to report back when we've (successfully?) had our party.
But! We had a meeting yesterday, and a wonderful person from the local climate nonprofit was there. She identified an issue in my efforts so far, namely that we're lacking true focus.
If you go back through my posts, I mention green spaces of many types. I mention maintenance and building new stuff, play parks and cemeteries and food gardens, EVERYTHING.
We can't do everything. So, by my decree as the person who does everything anyways, I sent out an email announcing renewed, emboldened focus.
We're not going to revitalise the cemetery. We might litter pick there, but ultimately the actual revitalisation is other people's ideas. Great ideas, but not aligned with our end goals of having new multi-generational and youth play spaces. Which, after all, was my initial goal. And learning and teaching folks how to care for headstones won't help us learn how to turn empty lots into urban parks.
So we have two new directions. We're going to be going forward with a monthly litter pick so that we can build people power and momentum. Then, we're going to focus on acquiring or land to build the much needed urban greenspaces in our city.
What's more, I found out that a plot of land that rumor claims is "owned by a hotel" is not owned by a hotel. It might even be the council who owns it. But it's in an awful state currently. So I'm currently drawing up a plan that has a first step of "contact the council and offer to take stewardship of that land". If our goal is to build and maintain green spaces, why not start by maintaining the ugly land we want to make beautiful?
We even have a member who is a graphic designer, and has offered to make some digital/CAD renders of the space "as it could be"
So... yeah! Lots of roundabout progress that feels like it's finally focused into a direction. And I'm so glad!
(we were also recommended to get high-vis vests with our logo made. So I'm also looking into that. Fun fun. I get to look into grants!)
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