Affecting change in south east Glasgow
An existing parent and toddler activity group was used to kick start a review of local streets in South East Glasgow. Walking groups in the area played a key role to help engage communities to influence improvements.
Areas of South East Glasgow which the project has focused on lag behind the national average in terms of health and economic indicators of deprivation, for example parts of Gorbals, Govanhill, Castlemilk and Toryglen are in the top 5% most deprived areas of Scotland. East Polloksheilds is in the top 10%. These areas fair badly in comparison to Scottish averages when it comes to ill health, hospital admissions and crime.
Book Start, a parent and toddler activity group agreed to use a section of the Reclaim Your Streets toolkit called ‘These streets are made for walking?’ to audit their routes to and from their homes and centre they used in the Gorbals. It was decided to extend the reach of the project to other walking groups by offering a series of workshops which would encourage them to share skills and influence improvements to their walking environments. A training event called Whose Streets Are They Anyway, held in October 2009, enabled the walking groups to discuss barriers to walking and come up with solutions so they could take action in their own areas. Advice and guidance was shared and the groups managed to take some of the problems forward through various working groups (e.g. engaging with the Council’s Land and Environmental Services).
Living Streets facilitated another workshop at a ‘Walk Glasgow’ development day in April 2010, which aimed to help local walkers discover new places they could walk and create new routes for their walking programme in South East Glasgow. In September 2010, a refresher training course was provided to look at how the walking groups could have a greater influence in their community as well as offer a taster street audit to give them ideas for solving problems as they occur.
The workshops sessions identified the following priorities by groups from across the South East Glasgow
- Lighting at night outside community facilities (e.g. St Francis Centre in Gorbals)
- Anti-social behaviour (e.g. pulling down fences at building sites, crime in Govanhill and underage drinking taking place on the streets)
- Parked cars blocking access at bus stops, entrances to shops, services, pavement parking
- Making the most of pleasant areas through seating, public toilets, signs, bins (e.g. Rose Garden in the Gorbals).
Making an impact:
A member from the Book Start group sent her findings to her local community council to inform them of the issues and the findings from ‘Whose Streets Are They Anyway’ were sent to local elected members. Council working groups who oversee improvements in the area such as the Land and Environmental Services working group and Community Safety were sent the recommendations from the training to act on where possible. Some of the quick fixes were dealt with immediately by speaking to relevant people (e.g. those working on building sites). The recommendations from the refresher training workshop were sent to ‘Walk Glasgow’, the city wide project overseeing all walking groups in Glasgow, for promotion so that others can follow what the South East has done. There has been a rapid response telephone number set up to report offensive graffiti or vandalism to the local authority.
Speaking from experience:
- The picture cards from ‘Whose Streets Are They Anyway’ were enlarged and used as tools to enable small groups to discuss potential problems impacting on pedestrians. This enabled all abilities to take part
- It was important to record any real life examples raised during the course of the training sessions so that they could be reported to the relevant organisations
- By bringing all the walking groups together they were able to share approaches they had used and build up a network to promote walking in the South East of Glasgow
- The volunteer walk group leaders were given a pedometer and pedometer challenge sheet to help them record how many steps they were walking each week and encourage others in the group to walk a bit longer each week
- The tool ‘These streets are made for walking’ enabled parents and their children to audit their route quickly and effectively as individuals, compare results during their activity sessions and identify ways to take the priorities forward.