Ideas for a change

After last Sunday's meeting at St. Georges Hall and discussing what, where and how the participants (still a overwhelming majority of women! 2 men in 11 participants...) would like to change in the urban landscape of Liverpool, I started to write a little project about an area near where I live. There might be people from that community that share my ideas or at least seome of them. Here it is:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=fr&geocode=&q=Liverpool+L8&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=12.657515,27.37793&ie=UTF8&ll=53.38025,-2.964635&spn=0.003117,0.006684&t=h&z=17

The little ‘park’ between Beloe Street, South Hill Road, Cockburn Street and Park Hill Road. And has a potential to become the ground for a sound community project. By community project I understand a project where people from all ages are participating in the activities.
The ‘park’ is utterly boring with a standard metal playground corner and two goals next to it that demark a football pitch. From the lower part of the park, starting half way through the street, a path goes up in diagonal to Park Hill Road. On the right low corner of this park square, Cockburn Street with South Hill Road, is a pub. The house still shows features of better times, sadly the first floor is boarded and not fit at the moment for any use. The ‘park’ is surrounded by small terraced houses, what gives the whole area a touch of cosiness, even if the park is slightly inclined and therefore not really made to be a square for meetings. However, the area can be divided in several sub areas which would give this space more of a place feeling, by bringing people doing different activities on it a the same time.
My suggestion for the area is the following:
1) Community garden: along the Beloe Street side and the South Hill Road side, a community vegetable and fruit garden could be created. The whole area could be surrounded by a hedge not too high to hide the activities, but not too low to facilitate vandalism either. A community compost could be planned there also.
2) The community garden starts just above the pub, who could have a terrace next to it, where people could meet, talk and have something to drink and eat. This would function as a surveillance position: the movement in the park and what happens in the garden and on the playground can easily be monitored. It could become an attraction point for the whole area and therefore improve local economy.
3) Children’s fruit garden: along the Cockburn Street, the children could have their garden for easy fruit bushes (Gooseberries, Rasberries, Blueberry) and fruits like strawberries. So children would grow into the habit of gardening and outdoor activities.
4) The pub building could be renovated as a community project and have a youth centre on the first floor afterwards. The youth could have programs on organic gardening and transformation of garden products into preserves etc.

This community project could be come not only an interesting activity, contribute to the health of the community, but also function as centre for knowledge dissemination between the different generations, as well as set an example for other places in Liverpool.

How to proceed?
1. Consult the community about the interest to have such a community project.
2. Phone the Council to know what status this park has and what is to do if the space would be transformed into a community garden/project.
3. Make a community work plan.
4. Start working…

I am looking forward to other people's ideas, so the People Plan turns into reality with each new proposition!

The city where one lives belongs to all that live there. It is sometimes necessary to remind this to decision makers. This project is a good way of establishing new comunication channels with decision makers and inside the communities.